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;PORT OF KINGS 

WILL LEV INC TON COMFORT 



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SPORT OF KINGS 


✓ 


BY 


WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT ✓ 

Author of “ The Road of Living Men” “ Fate Knocks at the Door” “ Routledge Rides Alone” 
“ She Buildeth Her House” etc. 


CHAPTER I. 



HIS is not a pastoral, but a story of the Mammon Canyon men, 


irascible from gold tension, not to mention heat, rock-dust, and 


A whiskey. Farther up, the Mammon is crossed by cattle-fords 
and mutton-trails and railroads, but all that sort of thing is put away 
as it nears the bordering Cabezo, sinks into a gorge, and shows enough 
yellow to hold the settlement and keep it miserable. 

You’d hardly know it was Arizona. A smart placer outfit can 
easily forget its country. There is something bland and abandoned, 
too, in being so close to Mexico. A tall man for half the year could 
ford the Cabezo, which does not exactly form the border-line, but for 
a little way is denoted as such by the community. 

The claims were scattered along the Mammon gorge for a mile or 
more, as the Canyon-stream turns a last time in its sleep before winning 
its nameless Nirvana in the Cabezo. The settlement is on the east bluff 
of the low canyon, and accentuates the emptiness of the long southern 
slope of the mesquite mesa — a desolate grade from the Sierra Diablo 
peaks to the main river. 

Bleak Totten’s claim was one of the first staked. It was supposed 
to be the heart of El Dorado, before the settlement lost its dreams and 
became a commonplace eke. Bleak had given it a good trial — for him. 
It hadn’t paid. Fortitude Lerch was doing well on the south, but he 
drank river- water and gambled not — in short, was a regular “ eke ” man. 
Fortitude could make a paying truck-garden in a gravel-pit, and went 
about the gold-wash as coldly as if he were looking for scattered veg- 
etable-seeds. Bertie Cotton was doing well on the north, but he had really 
hit it off. He had drawn the claim that Bleak should have taken, it was 
said; for Bleak was in at the first scent. Cotton was a little man with 
a violent disposition. 

Bleak was soft-handed; a natural gambler but not a winning one. 
His present business was man-hunting. Having been deputy to Fred 
Husted, sheriff of the river country, who had died of ptomaine poisoning, 
he now took title and dignity. Bleak would n’t steal ; also, he would n’t 


Copyright, 1913, by J. B. Lippincott Company. All rights reserved. 


2 


Sport of Kings 


£ 


work regularly, so (exclusive of the former sheriff, from whom there is 
no report) it fell out happily. Headquarters of the sheriff was in Nig 
Fan tod’s bar and layout. The angry scratches on the back of Bleak’s 
claim, made in his fresh frenzy for riches, were fast-effacing scars. 

Totten had a decent human heart, but it leaked. Giving was an 
emotion to him. He could n’t keep a hair-shirt. As a giver, he was 
dissipated, indiscriminate. ... A bulky person. . . . How excited and 
grieved he would have been to learn from some world- weathered outsider 
that he was a mammoth in innocence ! It was true. The world had 
not bit into him. He was so strong that nothing in the day’s routine 
trained him; and of his large brain-surfaces only a small central plat 
was under cultivation. Even whiskey was a matter of the custom of men. 
He felt better without it. This worried and dismayed Bleak. Three 
or four jolts — just enough to make most men happy tenants in the flesh- — 
carried him to the austere border-lands of illness, where one more 
would have betrayed him entirety — not in excitation and wayward con- 
duct, but in physical revolt. You could not have made Bleak happy by 
saying that he was too healthy, too natural, to endure this villainous 
prodding. He was vitally ashamed of his weak stewardship of the stuff 
that men lived and died for in the Canyon. 

Moreover, he was too normal to get on with any of the women of the 
settlement. He would no more have confessed his ghastly panic alone 
with one of these women, than his incapacity for more than a touch or 
two of the ordained stimulant. Bleak was far from splendid in his 
own eyes. 

The dead sheriff had named the placer Sodom. Disdaining the 
obvious, the settlement planted a few weeks afterward fourteen miles up 
the river was not Gomorrah, but Nineveh. The two towns affiliated. It 
was a keen sportive and competitive brotherhood. So far as Mammon 
County was concerned, there were none besides. The late sheriff had 
divided his time impartially between the two towns, but the heart of 
Bleak throbbed for Sodom. He did his best not to let this appear; but 
his face and life were clear as the Devil Mountains against the sunrise. 
Sodom used Bleak as a source of humor; and had been unable to go 
too far. 

In a community strange to delicacy, an unrestricted presumption 
is slow to halt, but Bleak loved it all. To be fellow-in-good-standing in 
Sodom was all he asked of power. Nineveh, on the contrary, was ready 
enough to respect the new sheriff. He had size and silence. As for the 
rest, there had been no show-down. 


Bleak happened to be in Nineveh when a certain small stranger rode 
in on a buckskin saddle-pony, leading a young and pretty brown mare, 
addressed as Miss Mincing. He put her away with quiet care in the 
breezy shed back of the blacksmith shop, and lariated the sorry veteran 


3 


Sport of Kings 

outside. Looking a last time to be sure that all was snug with the led- 
horse, the young man repaired to the bar for refreshment. 

There was a bit of Spanish or Mexican in the lad, but he had evi- 
dently spent years on this side of the border. His self-contentment now 
began to disturb Nineveh. He seemed to find himself capacious and 
sufficient. For an hour he played solitaire with his own deck, taking 
jolts at the bar from time to time. It was this last — the resignation 
with which he catered to a thirst out of all proportion to his size, and 
utterly disordering when one glanced at the brown boyish face — that 
especially aroused the village. He was certainly long on “ red likker ” 
for a child, Nineveh was forced to grant. It was Peters the bar-tender 
who spoke first: 

“ Goin’ to stop here ? ” 

“ No.” 

“An’ what might your name be?” 

“ Larry.” 

“ Goin’ fur?” 

Unlike many who are self-contained, the stranger proved amiable. 

“ They call it Sodom — where I go.” 

“ An’ what might be callin’ you to Sodom, as if sent fur ? ” Peters 
asked, relieved. There had been some tension about breaking the ice. 
Since the stranger replied with courtesy, Peters felt he might go on with 
his work, contemptuously familiar. 

“ A running horse there — I ’ve heard spoke of ” 

Peters snorted. The stranger was n’t even solid on his facts. He 
didn’t hasten to divulge. 

“You speak?” Larry asked politely. 

“ I did n’t say nothin’. Thar ain’t nothin’ to say about that Sodom 

hoss ” Peters helped himself to a drink, regarding his own image 

in the small overworked mirror, as he lifted his unfinished portion with 
a flourish. 

Larry regarded him studiously, then dealt himself out a fresh hand. 

Two citizens of Nineveh entered and were regaled with the incident 
of the “ Sodom hoss,” Peters concluding his narrative with “ An’ I told 
him there wa ’n ’t nothin’ to say about that Sodom hoss ” 

One of the listeners now approached the stranger, informing him 
with : 

“ Not wishin’ to keep you in no suspense, might I inquire what 
hoss you has in mind ? ” 

“Lazaroos — Lazarine ” Larry repeated the syllables carefully, 

as if foreign to his consciousness. 

“ U-mm — and findin’ said Lazarus — might I inquire your intentions 
toward same ? ” 

Larry put down his hand, and smiled boyishly, as if condoning 
a weakness of his own. 


4 


Sport of Kings 

“ You see, sir,” he said, “ I have money. In the North they say — 
such a good horse live in Sodom. I come to see if he is better horse 
than my small mare.” 

“ Which I take it is square and neatly put,” replied the other. 
“ You *re just wide on one thing, young feller, an* that is about Lazarus 
residin' in Sodom. Nothin* down thar resemblin' a runnin* hoss much 
more than a tea-kettle. The hoss you want is right here in Ninevy — 
an*, what *s more, I *m Bill Champian, what holds the deed thereof an* 
good will an* the makin* of matches.** 

Larry arose. It seemed for a moment that he was about to clap his 
hands with delight, but at the last instant he preserved his front. Such 
conduct would have ruined it utterly. Bleak sunk into deep interest. 
The black-eyed boy was gentle and low-voiced as a woman. Whiskey was 
milk to him; and there had been a play of hands over the cards, that 
made Bleak think of trick-squirrels in the matter of speed and mastery 
of small movement. They were very small and frail brown hands, 
except for the ends of the fingers, which were knobbed, cushioned, and 
almost nail-less. 

The race was arranged in two minutes, but negotiations were beaten 
thin over the rest of the afternoon. Bleak was absorbed in the extreme 
delicacy of these. The general atmosphere of Nineveh was that of 
something to live for. Repairing to the shed, behind the blacksmith 
shop, Bleak heard the following as Larry led out the brown filly: 

“ You see, sir, — not much running horse where I live.** 

“ Some promisin' debutantie — that,** said Champian, eying the brown 
mare, and coming closer. 

“ She very gentle — except don't touch near stifle-joint,** Larry said, 
with a touch of haste. 

“ Right you are,** acknowledged Champian. “ Some o* them real 
good young mares are partic’lar.’* 

The boy hastened to add, “ I just want to know — if she really 
run ** 

“ I reckon you *ve come to the right place.’* 

Larry regarded him gratefully, and turned again to the Mincing 
maiden. “ She hardly finished to grow,” he said, with a touch of emo- 
tion. “ See her head — a baby head ! ** 

Bleak was sorry for the boyish chap, whose love was affecting, but 
misguided to the extent of wasting his savings. Bill Champian dropped 
a brown paw across Larry's shoulder. “We don’t lock nobody up in 
this village,” he said, “for lettin* fly affections on a good hoss. . . . 
I 'member when I had my first runnin* hoss. That filly o* your *n *11 
make a good mare. She *s a purty little piece.” 

The race was arranged for noon of the day after to-morrow. 

“ Sodom *11 want to get a few dollars up here,” Bleak observed. 
“ I *11 take the stage back to-night an* report.’* 


Sport of Kings 


5 


CHAPTER II. 

So Bleak carried back the word that old Lazarus, a roan pony dis- 
tinguished in years, but rejuvenated in matter of record, was to defend 
the Canyon county against the modest intrusion of a little brown filly 
named Miss Mincing, from the indefinite North, and under the imme- 
diate management of a young stranger named Larry. 

Raw gold was not recognized tender along the Canyon. The eke 
was assembled and cashed during the first week of each month. Commer- 
cial arrangements were conducted in the intervals largely on credit. 
The placer settlement found that by keeping the gold out of circulation, 
it was in a way defended from its own lawless incentives to drink and 
gamble. All this to explain that the fourteenth of the month was not 
a good gambling day for Sodom, and that the money Bleak collected to 
take back to Nineveh for the horse-race, while considerable, meant pain 
and sacrifice and growling. 

Bleak had none of his own, and, since he did not work his claim, 
had none coming. The regular workers could borrow at a vicious per- 
centage from the thrifty Fortitude Lerch; but Bleak had no such 
collateral as a monthly moiety, and his wage as sheriff was distant 
and already sorely embarrassed. 

There was a general credit at Nig’s bar from month to month, but 
the faro-layout was a neglected side-issue of the same institution except 
during the four or five days after each pay-day. Nig resented the 
horse-race. His booze-book was already deeply laid with credit and 
advances; dust was deep on the layout; while here and now his natural 
prey was straining distractedly and in divers directions to raise money 
for the plundering outdoor sport up in Nineveh. 

There was one bright ray over all. Lazarus was unbeatable. Bleak 
melted in pity for the boyish Larry. Such a fine, frank lad, with such 
an unmistakable love for animals. It seemed an uncouth thing to 
go out after his property. Bleak, however, did n’t hear any sentiments 
of this sort expressed around Sodom, and he had long since lost faith 
in his own convictions. 

Pray permit one momentary confidence. From a child, Bleak had 
lost station — and the comfortable awe of others — by making explanations 
of his ideas and feelings. Year after year he grew upon memories of the 
soft places of past conversations. Here and there he had warmed to 
this and that individual — and, warming, he had spoken. Under stars 
and in back-room bars, he had given forth himself. It had come back 
to him hot and galvanic with scorn. Upon his confidences invariably 
a butt was established. Such was the young life of the sheriff whose 
present law was : ce When in doubt say f Yes ’ or * No.’ ” 

Such, gentlemen, was the serpent wisdom of Bleak Totten ; but Sodom 
had him on the old basis. 

Against the wish to strip Larry, present needs and the innate love 


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Sport of Kings 

of the gambler rose high and authoritative in the breast of Bleak. 
Somebody would take Larry’s money — why not a piece of it? Con- 
summate psychology is required to bring the Totten faculties to light. 
. . . Bleak sold a six-shooter. He had tried many times to sell his 
claim, and now he tried again, and failed. He mortgaged the slight 
and remote balance of his next draw from the county. Since he was 
to carry the Sodom money to the paddock at Nineveh, a mentionable 
percentage was coming to him, in the essential event of winning. More- 
over, there were a few left soft enough to add to their personal loans. 
Altogether, he had a personal stake that kept him apart from the pikers. 

Sodom was too poor to lose a day and half, so Bleak went alone. 
He took with him every separate and aggregate dollar that could be 
tortured from the community, and went alone. 

There was but a rudiment of an escarpment in the Mammon river- 
bed at Nineveh. Hard grit along the bank, the distance being about six 
furlongs, formed the speedway. 

Larry pointed to an upright engine close to the track, a little better 
than half-way to the stretch, and inquired kindly as to its nature. Miss 
Mincing had been led over the course, and was now ready for the start 
at the edge of the settlement. 

Bill Champian, swift to reply, spoke casually: “ That h’istin’ gear? 
Well, young feller, when we started this placer outfit, thar were some 
designs on makin’ her a strictly modern enterprise. OF Mammon her- 
self is to blame. That ’s as fur as we arrived in machinery — — ” 

“But the steam is up ” 

“ Sure — she ’s a gravel-h’ist ” 

“ It is close to the track.” 

“ It would be easier a whole lot — to move the track, young felleT.” 

Larry glanced at Miss Mincing. She was watching it now from 
afar. A sweet thing she was, subdued shine of brown on her coat, head 
and ears 'up and breathing just so you could hear. 

Larry still regarded it doubtfully. 

Bleak’s heart smote him. That hoisting gear was the only devil 
Lazarus knew. The old roan sweated in his stall a half-mile away 
when the whistle blew. Headed that wav, Lazarus became a runaway, 
with the one idea of getting it behind him. He would n’t leave the 
track; but his effort became supernatural as he neared, passed, and 
felt the sheeted fiend at his loins. This was indispensable property 
of the Lazarus greatness in his declining years. There could n’t have 
been a race without it. This was the devil that rode Lazarus to victory. 

Now it proved that Larry had more money with him than hisf 
modest words conveyed. What Nineveh cared to gamble and what Bleak 
brought from Sodom was matched dollar for dollar. Bleak, as sheriff 
and non-resident of the racing-town, was stake-holder. 


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Sport of Kings 

u Larry/’ he said hoarsely at the last moment, “ if you lose and 
need a bit of change to get on your way — just ask for Bleak Totten, 
won’t you?” 

“ Thank you, Mister Sheri ff,” said the boy. “ We try not make 
Nineveh ashamed for us.” 

Bleak’s inclination as delegate from Sodom was to tender the 
affectionate regard of the entire county, but his old fear of words 
recalled the utterance from mid-stream. Half-way through the first 
sentence, he gripped Larry’s elbow and murmured that he’d be pleased 
to buy a drink after the race. 

A flying-start, perfectly accomplished — Beanie Tuttle sitting Lazarus, 
Larry riding his own — and the race was on. . . . The narrative has not 
progressed thus far with any hope of surprising the reader — as Nineveh 
and Sodom were surprised and pained. Though a sort of climax to the 
overture, that horse-race belongs to the present opus merely as an 
introduction of theme. . . . Bleak took the favorite Ninevehan position 
near the hoisting-gear, to watch the race. 

The horses were not ten seconds on their way when he realized with 
a burst of pleasure that Larry did n’t need to apologize for Miss Mincing. 
She settled down to work, her muzzle slightly tilted toward the roan’s 
withers, and held the pace which Lazarus increased in jumps, as a car 
with the full juice turned on too suddenly. The essence of the tre- 
mendous excitement in the mind of Bleak — a lover of animals — was that 
slightly tilted muzzle, that modestly inquiring muzzle of the Mincing 
maiden, like the pleasant attitude of a loved child. There was nothing 
pert about it — but salient, containing the titanic ease that goes with 
mastery, and before which kings bow, and clowns. 

Bleak’s first restlessness arose out of this emotion — out of his delight 
in the sheer beauty of the filly’s performance. No other horse had ever 
held the pace with Lazarus, now charging his private and perfect dragon. 
The course was half-run before realization penetrated the stress of the 
moment — that she might hold the pace at the end, with a fraction over 
at the finish. 

The wine of the man’s life changed to impotable water. He fought 
to stand upon his limbs. The horses were upon him. Beanie Tuttle 
pulling on the left rein with all his might to keep Lazarus, in his suicidal 
mania, from flattening against the gear. Larry was running low and 
light, with a loose rein. Miss Mincing might play with her nerves in the 
try-out, but no man-made machinery could break her concentration 
when the deep wells of her art were thus gushing in expression. 

Lazarus, hideous progeny of nightmare; and at the withers of this 
roan scourge, the brown filly held her place, as at the beginning— her 
muzzle tilted slightly, respectfully. She was a thing of pure spirit to 
Bleak’s dazed mind — playfully contending with matter before destroying 


8 Sport of Kings 

it. He saw the end in her ease, in her sweetness, in the pale ecstasy 
of Larry. 

And now at the instant of their passing the main artifice of the 
course was sprung — the sky-rending whistle of the hoisting-gear. It 
jerked Bleak back into his body with a psychic wrench that grogged 
him like a blow on the chin. The flanks of the runners were lost in 
dust. . . . They were apart at the finish; the bad angle divulged 
nothing more. 

Bleak was sitting upon the grit. He didn’t recall getting there. 
Somehow he had been dropped at the last. From the silence about 
him, he pieced together his ruin, and his worse than ruin — the horror 
of facing Sodom. . . . And over this was a sort of idolatry for the 
brown filly, that enveloped the boy who loved and conquered with 
her. . . . Larry was riding up. Miss Mincing courtesied to the hoist, 
danced engagingly, and breathed in low excitement. 

“ We maybe have that drink now, Mister Sheriff,” Larry said politely. 

Bleak got to his feet. The unaccustomed stiffness of his trousers- 
pockets seemed first to contain a vague deep trouble — some undesignated 
disaster. The idea of buying a drink narrowed it down to the inevitable 
revelation. He passed over the stakes, plucking forth with muttered 
apology — a key, four matches, and a cocoa-bean. 

“ Whoa, little kid,” Larry said fondly, as he distributed the paper 
variously about his person. “ She miss that engine — next time race.” 

Afar on the mesa, in a great circle, the central point of which was 
the hoisting-gear, the roan was being led back to paddock. 

CHAPTER III. 

Bleak alighted from the stage at the outer hoop of Sodom. Had 
the town been a room full of cornered train-robbers, he could, with the 
eyes of his townsmen upon him, have burst open the door; but to be 
the first to “ give down ” the news was n’t in him. Bleak crept into 
Nig Fantod’s bar an hour after the stage. The lay-out lay in shroud 
and shadow. The bar was not only empty but stainless. Here and there, 
as you might picture a ruined city recently excavated, human figures 
were hunched in chairs, faces in hands, elbows on knees. 

Over this presided the one implacable eye of Nig Fantod — the bar 
between him and the rest, his sleeves rolled up. The Eye now roved to 
Bleak, who winced. He wanted to sneak into one of the farthest ’most 
shadowed chairs, and take his head in his hands like the others. 

“ Here he is with your winnin’s, gents — here he comes all heeled to 
the buff an’ pash’nit to purchase.” 

There was a halt, and then the scathing irony took another turn : 

"If you gold-pickers spent your evenin’s gamblin’ natchurl — ’stid 
o’ sportin’ ’round other people’s hosses— mebbe you wouldn’t get shed 


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Sport of Kings 

o’ the town’s pay-roll by the fifteenth of the month — and mebbe you 
would. . . . Sport o’ kings, hey! This panhandle placer gives me the 
cramps. A guardeen is needed here — right acute.” 

Nobody answered; nobody seemed to listen. Perhaps the monologue 
had progressed far before Bleak entered. . . . Nig turned slightly, 
dropped his hand over the shoulder of a black square bottle, and twisted 
the cork. It was like the death-squeak of a mouse — the cork tight 
against the glass. There was a twitch in the shoulders of the men 
nearest. A head was raised in the far shadows. A single glass was 
plumped on the bar and presently “ with white fire laden,” which 
mortals call Tom-gin. 

Nig tweaked the cork again: queer nervous jolts shot through the 
hunched figures, but nobody looked up. Nig now refreshed himself 
with old Square-Face and announced that he was about to seek his 
virtuous and seemly cot. . . . Figures uprose one by one and passed 
out into the dry and pallid night. Bertie Cotton was one of the last 
to pull himself together. The little man appeared to discover Bleak’s 
boots. His eye lingered upon them interminably and then climbed 
the ankles, shins, knees, belt, shoulders — in unblinking tension. 

“ Hello, Bertie.” Bleak’s voice was that of a man down and done. 

Bertie Cotton snorted and passed out. 

CHAPTER IV. 

At dusk on the second evening following, Bleak stepped into Nig 
Fantod’s bar and lay-out from the camp-street. “ Saunter ” is the usual 
word, but there wasn’t a saunter left in Sodom. Nig’s place was 
empty — and the Eye baleful. 

“ Come on — get in the game. Start somethin’, Bleak.” 

“ I ’ve still got my cocoa-bean ” 

(C I ’m sick for the sound an’ feel of work. See where you luck 
is with my money.” 

He shoved across the lay-out thirty silver dollars. Bleak started 
to play, and the old properties and sensations of the game surged about 
him — except for the occasional pang that he was playing for nothing. 

He could n’t lose. For years he had been faithful to the Old Luck 
Lady, and she had kept her face turned away. Now she had come home 
to his arms to die. Bleak became enraptured with the hour, the night, 
and the abiding passion of chance. 

Villagers, a pair, entered, perceived the trend of affairs, and de- 
parted in swift silence. 

Bleak had not seen them. Nig Fantod was puzzled only for a 
moment. His first thought was that the wet placer was dead indeed 
when a man flaring with strange fortune, and piling up the increment 
of the same, was not enough to hold the vagrant eye. This was the lull 


10 


Sport of Kings 

before the swarm. The two finding honey had gone to fetch the others. 
. . . The whole camp crept in and ranged around. 

Bleak felt the crowd, but only at first among the vague exteriors of 
his enthralled consciousness. There was a persistent gonging in his 
mind; but with each passing second it became harder to break the spell, 
harder to confess that he was playing for fun. What an explanation 
for a gambler ! 

Nig’s lone eye played upon the board with a soft fury. There was 
an ecstasy of sensation for him as well — to spend all his evil luck where 
it cost nothing. He rattled the boxes, and cashed the other’s bets with 
studied gameness. 

The Old Lady now sprung new angles, her full quiver of tricks. 
She danced like a witch to Bleak’s decisions; answering his farthest 
whim in the very fashioning of the conception. She was a marvel of 
acquiescence, shamelessly, flauntingly his. And Bleak was winning 
dollars faster than dreams make them in the hot dry dawns of the 
gambler. 

Nig, whose original idea was to attract a maverick dollar or two, now 
held with brooding horror the thought of some one else breaking in and 
following Bleak’s streak. But Sodom had been true to Lazarus. Forti- 
tude Lerch, the only man with money, would n’t gamble, even now. 

To Bleak, it was like the moment at the end of the race. He was 
out of his body, and subtler senses penetrated the back of the decks 
as if they were glass, and not a villainous opaque red. Black and red 
and court — he knew them as friends in a brilliant uncurtained house. 
His falterings here and there were second-thoughts when the poor 
human brain broke into the game and spoiled the inspiration. 

He called in exact order the last three cards of the deck, and looked 
up into the faces of his townsmen. 

There were about thirteen gentlemen present — eager and impatient 
as a picket-line of cavalry-horses when the forage-wagons drive in. 

Roughly, Bleak owed every man present. And he realized now that 
it was too late to speak. Honor and affiliation shone upon him from the 
faces of men. This was his highest dream of earth-conquest — to make the 
men of Sodom look at him so. Cold sweat broke from him. Nig was 
ready to begin again. 

Bleak felt it. He was regarded as a Baptist, as a Messiah — as one 
who caused pay-day to dawn out of due-time — the Savior after the brutal 
worldliness of the Lazarus defeat. He felt the thoughts of men — that he 
had found a dollar somewhere and brought it to Sodom’s ancient 
despoiler. A veritable Excalibur, this dollar, a bank-breaking dollar, 
and Bleak’s winnings were Sodom winnings — such was the mental 
licking of chops that Bleak felt in the air. Nig Fantod was unloved. 
Bleak and his dollar had been chosen to vanquish him. It was the 
prettiest and most fateful excellence that had ever befallen Sodom. 


11 


Sport of Kings 

Bleak was held in agony to the game. He could not speak now. He 
must lose — lose before the eyes of men. The baleful Eye was merely 
using him to attract others. The damnable word decoy burned in Bleak’s 
mind. None of these things had come to him as he began. And he 
owed every man. . . . 

All he knew now was that he must end it. He gathered his whole 
pile and played it on the color of the next card. Nig’s eye roved from 
face to face. All the men were passionately absorbed in Bleak. The 
banker covered the money with exasperating leisureliness, and this 
remark : 

“ The bank ’s done, gents, all but the stage-ride up to Nineveh.” 

Bleak could n’t see, in the biting suspense. The lantern went red 
and unearthly. It was almost against nature to hope that he had lost, 
yet he knew it was not so. The lay-out ran before his eyes as Nig 
unclasped the card. The roar in his ears — break of the terrible tension 
that tore a shout with it from every throat — gave him the hideous 
assurance. His legs weakened, and he heard the soft, unctuous laugh 
of Nig Fantod: 

“ I ’m glad you ’re playin’ my money, Bleak.” 

The shout stopped like a live thing — felled. 

“It’s right, fellers,” Bleak whimpered. “I was only playin’ Nig’s 
stake to pass the time. Not a notch in the milling belongs to me.” 

He lifted the blanket by the corners and rolled back to the banker 
the hundreds of dollars in gold and silver. 

Bertie Cotton disappeared as the first verbal volleys began to give 
way to a ragged but deadly skirmish-fire. Out into the dark he ran. 
Five minutes later he was fumbling through his blanket-roll in the dark 
of his shack, and produced a small leather bag, with which he hastened 
back. 

Bleak stood against the wall, head bared and bowed before the' 
smoking ironies of the company. Bertie borrowed an empty cigar-box 
and placed it on the table near him of the persecutions. Then he drew 
the latch of the leather bag and noisily emptied the holdings into the 
cigar-box. This he tendered to Bleak. 

“ Play with ’em all you want, Sheriff — but not for keeps,” he said 
witheringly. 

Bleak had lost any idea of his own innocence. It did not occur to 
him to explain that he had been victimized ; that he had begun the thing 
alone with the gambler. His old terror for words kept him dumb. He 
stood against the wall, dying the death of shame, with the box of 
marbles in his hand. . . . 

The concentration of his persecutors was broken at last by the 
far roar of Gibson, the stage-driver. A stranger was seen to bend himself 
almost double in the spook-calling dimness of the stage-coach lantern. 


12 


Sport of Kings 

and emerge to the sand in front of Mg’s place. The crowd parted at the 
door to let him in. He was tall, lean, and far beyond his youth. 

“ Who ’s sheriff here ? ” he asked, clearing his throat. 

Bleak’s hand wobbled the box; his lips moved but he made no 
sound. He was as one turned out — stricken with venom and driven 
from the hive. It did not come to him that he could be wanted in his 
real capacity. This was fresh disaster. The stranger stared at him. 

“ Honest — that ’s the sheriff,” Bertie Cotton declared, with the wit 
that drives unerringly at weakness. 

“ Wot ’s eatin’ him — family dead or just likker ? ” the stranger asked. 

“ I Tn all right,” said Bleak. 

“ And you Te the feller that brought the roll from down here to 
bet on the Lazarus hoss ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You ’re sheriff — it ain’t just a nickname?” 

Bleak put down the box and, leaning forward, clutched the shoulder 
of the newcomer. “ If you ’ve got business with me — start something,” 
he said. 

Everybody felt better. Sodom had it on Bleak, but not the world 
in general. 

“ I was only waitin’ for you to come to,” the other said, wincing. 
“ My name ’s Kenney, and I ’m from Finchville, and I own Miss Minc- 
ing — the same bein’ at large with a hoss-thief named Larry.” 

Bleak felt strangely lifted. Here was a task to take him out of 
Sodom, until Sodom could forget. There would be a reward. . . . 
The crowd forgot everything now but the deadly crime. Sodom was not 
composed of horsemen, but the earlier days had permeated the settle- 
ment with wrath for this particular offense. Men are apt to be religious 
about unwritten laws. 

“ Tell me about this here Larry,” said Bleak. 

“You saw him?” 

“ Sure. He knew what he had. He rode her. His conduct was 
modest an’ winnin’-like ” 

“ Gents,” said Kenney, “ I’ve brung thet boy up, an’ he ’s a sarpint. 

. . . Sheriff, he’ll smile at you modest and winnin’ and put a knife 
through your spleen. That’s what he does best — that modest and 
winnin’ comportment. Never raises his voice, drunk or sober; looks at 
you beguileless as a child ” 

“Ready to shoot, is he?” Bleak asked professionally. 

“ Never sleeps.” 

“ Shoot straight ? ” 

“ Sheriff — I hate to tell ye — but he is just that full of h . And 

quick ” 

“ He seems to love that young mare,” observed Bleak, who felt that 
shooting as a topic was exhausted. 


13 


Sport of Kings 

“ Like a woman. . . .Yon see. he took care of her latterly. She 
was cared for. I arise to state, she was cared for, gents ” 

“ She showed it np in Nineveh/’ remarked Nig Fantod. 

“ Gents,” said Kenney with emotion, “ she ain’t just natchurl — 
that filly. Pure steel-dust — finer ’n split silk. Why, I ’d let that filly 
walk on me ” 

He was on the verge of break-down. Nig moved around back of 
the bar, and Kenney flowed thither with the general tendency. In the 
great sorrow of the moment, all drank with the unfortunate. 

“ Larry said he was goin’ back north,” Bleak observed later. 

“ J ust moved out of sight thet-away,” Kenney observed, “ circled 
around the town and back down here, crossin’ the river. He’ll pick 
up a race here and there over yonder in Mexico. He came from there, 
an’ thet’s his game ■” 

There was no denying that this was the likely plan of the horse- 
thief. He had doubtless passed Sodom far to the east on the mesa, and 
crossed the lower ford of the Cabezo in the night. 

“ Thar’s two Mexican trails to follow — Santo Tomas and San 
Miguel,” said Bleak. “ You take one, and I ’ll take the other.” Then 
he added delicately, “ But our treasury is some — — ” 

“ Me an’ Finchville is interested in eight hundred dollars’ worth 
of reward for the mare; an’ I sure won’t see a sheriff go out on the 
prospect of gettin’ shot through an empty stomach and no place to 
lie up in.” 

“ Life sure must have been cruel to you, Mister,” said Bleak. 

CHAPTER V. 

“ Killjoy,” said Bleak at dawn next morning ( the name of Renney 
had fallen into swift disintegration overnight), “we ’ll make the fords if 
one of us ain’t stricken with some horrible spell o’ sickness before we 
together, and at the fork over yonder near Maldonado toss a penny 
to see who takes San Miguel, an’ who takes Santo Tomas. That is, if 
reach the fork.” 

“ You ’re bound to get wet feet fordin’ the Cabezo,” Bertie Cotton 
added gloomily. 

The horseman from Finchville was too enfathomed in darkness to 
catch the frivolity of these remarks. Bleak now observed : 

“ It don’t appear reasonable none to set forth on these here pro- 
ceeding ’thout a touch o’ steam from Nig.” At the bar, he added 
brokenly to the Sodomese : “ If I get the hot trail, fellers, I ’ll bring 

back that greaser-kid an’ the filly, too. All them small matters accruin’ 
will be settled pronto.” 

Bertie Cotton could not forbear : “ Don’t gamble none for keeps, 

Sheriff.” 

The two departed on foot in the brightness of the mesa. The penny 


14 


Sport of Kings 

chose Bleak for the San Miguel trail, and his heart came slowly back 
as the tines of the fork widened between him and the miserable Benney. 
They had arranged a certain itinerary, and a rough plan of connecting 
by telegraph, in case either trail became hot. In any event, they would 
open communications at the end of six weeks, between the two big 
towns for which the trails were named. 

Bleak had n’t been ten days down San Miguel way before the various 
signs accumulated into conviction that he had chosen the warm trail. 
The little brown mare had passed this way; at least, had touched the 
main trail at certain points. It was desolate going. The gregarious 
Bleak was worn with solitude. Sodom and all that pertained clutched 
his heart from the now remote aspect, like the voice of a loved woman. 
Long since had he been resurrected from the death he had died from 
shame. Bleak saw himself leading Miss Mincing home to Sodom, the 
roped prisoner astride. He heard his own voice modestly explaining to 
his fellow-citizens how he had trailed Larry down, made the capture, 
and brought back the best runner in the Southwest, straight up and 
unmaimed on her superlative legs. And the bow he would make upon the 
delivery of the eight hundred. . . . Bleak always cleared his throat at 
this point of the dream; for he would lead the men to the bar, and 
across. There would be no moaning there. He would say — this was the 
climacteric moment — “ Fellers, I hate to talk business, but there ’s ten 

or eleven little accounts here ” And then he would point man to 

man that he owed, always suggesting that the amount was less than he 
thought, meditating on the possible error. . . . The precious wine of the 
home-town’s adulation would warm his heart from the picture; and 
he would suddenly discover the sandy trail running like a torrent beneath 
him, so quickened had he become with these matters. He was badly 
gun-marked. From belt to thigh, his big six-shooter had ground him in 
the days of grit and sweat and furious heat. 

A pony was purchasable in any town, but it was a land of costly 
saddles. He could retain his front as a sheriff from Arizona, by saying 
he had abandoned his pony, but never by breaking into town on a cheap 
saddle. So, deeper and deeper he strode on foot into the Mexican 
mountains, listening for a horse-race. Hews of war did not cover 
ground nor travel more rapidly than the word of freshly matched ponies. 
A new village every night — and usually an added word of the little 
brown mare. Larry had travelled fast — that was the difficulty. 

Apart from the worry that the boy might take it into his head to 
break for the East, into Killjoy’s jurisdiction, Bleak stuck to the belief 
that he would eventually overhaul his game. ... In due course dawned 
the day of fate, which began with a long and terrible journey. A range 
of hills marked at daybreak appeared no closer in the dreadful burning 
of midday. He may have misunderstood the Mexican’s directions, or 
possibly, in blinding pressure, missed the trail. He was caught in 


15 


Sport of Kings 

a vindictive valley, deeply and hotly sanded, as if to keep the sky from 
breaking into flame from the furnace of earth. 

Bleak drank his last drop of water in this furious noon, and staggered 
on, not comprehending that he was on his feet when many another 
would have fallen. He was young, strong, and had been physically 
unhurt. He suffered until he could suffer no more; then a new door 
of torture swung upon him. Still he would not fall. The far hills 
wavered before his eyes — with prayers that were visible, and which 
moved in company with his mother’s countenance, his father’s whip, and 
the mock worlds of boyhood, when he was the butt of other communities. 
Sodom, the nearest in fact, was the farthest in the picture during those 
unspeakable hours. Bleak knew only that he must not fall; that the 
sand would grill him if he stretched out upon it, as a fish tossed into a 
basket of hot stones. He drew the barrel of his pistol from the holster, 
and thumped his thighs with the butt, and tried to keep his tongue in his 
mouth. . . . The shadow of the man grew longer; he made guttural 
noises to it — watched it wobble the pistol. Never once did this innocent 
realize that he was prodigious; and not once did he think of blowing 
out his brains. . . . They found him at dusk at the edge of the little 
village Areola. And lo, there was a woman in that village. 

They bore him to a hammock at the crook of the veranda, where the 
south wind turning the corner of the old stone fonda moved softly like 
the breath of a child. Bleak was just one-tenth of a ton, charged with 
queer animations but no brain, and without fleshly feeling. Doubtless 
the spirit of the man was taxed with many agonies to remain, but Bleak’s 
consciousness was not among them. 

The Woman, Isobel, sat beside the hammock and made her dream. 
Years before, when she was browner and bare-legged, the old priest of 
Areola, placing his hand upon her head, with shut eyes, had promised 
that a stranger would come to her from the North — a stranger to fill 
her life and be very much her own heart-property. The priest may have 
seen Bleak coming in the mysterious distances of mystic vision, or he 
may merely have noted Isobel’s strangeness. However, he was a pure 
old man. From that hour the maid and woman had regarded the 
Mexican boys with an open-and-shut incisiveness of understanding that 
stripped them of the last shred of romance. She penetrated their 
vanities and deviltries, and laughed at their passions; for she saw in 
other women what came of giving way to the early whirlwinds. The 
nearest thing in English to the name Isobel had earned in her own 
village was “ The Frost ” (La Helada). As usual, the men were wrong— 
for she had fires to burn the pueblo. She was merely strange in under- 
taking to master her own ignitions. 

La Helada had waited for her stranger. And he had come with 
the grand unconsciousness of a conqueror. 

The men of Areola were not so rapier-keen for her now. Isobel 


36 


Sport of Kings 

was twenty-four, and in a land where women bloom early, and the early 
bloom of women is the madness of men. . . . There had been one — he 
had come down to woo from the big rebano in the hills between Areola and 
Arecibo — and, failing to win, had tried to spoil her for all other 
adventures of the heart, by cutting out her eye. Yes, he had made her 
fight to be free. The story of this encounter was written in whitish 
welts upon La Helada s cheek-bone, but only the strangers noted it now. 
Areola forgot the scars, but not the story. The woman had forgotten 
neither. The Mexican had never returned to Areola ; still, Isobel 
believed she would kill him in life’s good time. 

And now she sat in the darkness by the hammock of the stranger, 
lifting his head to wet his lips with wine and water every little while; 
and often bathing his eyes and forehead with water cooled in the 
swinging-gourd, which was covered with moistened cloth. Her younger 
sister, Marie, dared not come near. 

From the first, Isobel had acted astonishingly in behalf of the near- 
dead white man. It was she who had found him when he had fallen at 
the edge of the village. (She had tolerated her father’s hands only to 
assist her in carrying him to the hammock.) The fondista was, not 
permitted even to find out what the stranger possessed, though God knew 
he kept a hotel, not a hospital; and God knew Areola was not what it 
was for keeping a fonda. God knew much about the old man’s business — 
by his manner of speaking. The daughter had stared him into miserable 
silence, and slapped Marie’s cheek, because she laughed at the stranger’s 
beard. La Helada, drudge and man-hater! 

The stars cleared, the moon arose, and the woman drew nearer, rapt 
in realization. . . . He had come. He would live. He would take her 
away. They would be rich. The rest of the great world, with its 
cities, seas, and furious sounds, would be theirs to conquer. Times, 
Isobel had almost ceased to believe in the terrifying distances and rumors 
of civilization beyond Areola. . . . There would be no beatings, no 
drunkenness, no herd-watchings. Had she not been faithful; had she 
not waited? And when she became absolutely sure there would be no 
beatings nor drunkenness — how she would serve him! Always! No 
other woman should come near him. That was the only safe way. Not 
even Marie. This was a new anguish. He must take her away from 
Marie very soon. For Marie had grown up. She had become the very 
essence of contagion to the heart-malady of man. 

At that moment, though the elder sister did not know, she was 
desolating the heart of a lover who waited afar for Marie at the edge 
of the village. The very cross and petulant younger sister could not 
steal forth with La Helada there at the door guarding her gift from 
heaven. In the usual course, Isobel would have been in her room. The 
fondista was long since asleep. God knew it was trouble enough to 
stay awake most of the day. Surely everything was amiss since the 


17 


Sport of Kings 

absurd, bearded extranjero appeared. ... It was n’t that Marie cared 
much for this particular lover. There were plenty of others. But there 
was that in her young blood that answered the light o’ the moon. The 
season of warm humid sweetness which drives out the nun from a 
woman's soul was upon her. Her breast ached for adventure. Sleep 
belonged to another life; so Marie could only watch from the upper 
balcony and weary herself with rage and restlessness. 

Bleak heard a woman's far singing; and concluded he had died and 
gone to heaven. He was disinclined to open his eyelids for the present. 
It might not be heaven; at least, suffering was over for the time. . . . 
What a day was that which had killed him ! He shuddered. . . . The 
singing stopped. 

CHAPTER VI. 

A hand touched his forehead. His head was lifted and the sharp 
scent of fermented grapes quickened — before the cup of water and wine 
touched his lips. . . . And so the angels talked Spanish. Here was 
incentive for perfecting the language, that he had never known on 
the Border. 

Curiosity now dominated for an instant. Through half-drawn lids 
he saw the leaning woman, the three-quarter moon partially eclipsed 
by her hair. He was quite willing to appear to lapse into depths again 
after drinking, but the woman had caught the glint of his eyes. Bending 
very near, she began to ask soft questions in Spanish. Queerly, he under- 
stood her very well. Once when he had drunk too much ron bianco in 
Sodom, he had talked Spanish like a native, even anticipating the drift 
of voluble offerings before they were half delivered. Was this heaven 
like that? 

“ What is this town ? ” he asked after a moment. 

“ This is little Areola, Senor.” 

Then he asked many absurd things about how he got there, and 
into the hammock, and if this were a hospital. 

Isobel replied. 

“ But why are you taking care of me ? ” 

“ Because I choose to.” 

“ Ah ! ” 

“ Will you have your supper now? 99 she asked presently. 

Bleak had just met the palpitating thought, had he been robbed? 

A man always associates robbery with a strange woman. His hand 
slid under his blue shirt to the place were the wallet was kept. 

“ I would not let them touch it,” she said. 

At least, heaven was not unlike Areola. . . . There was something 
blessedly authoritative about the woman’s voice and presence. Certainly 
this was not the panic with which he had met other women. Bleak 
was sure he would do well to do as this woman said. This was the 


18 Sport of Kings 

sane, sick-man trend. He was presently awake to the romance, wide 
as the night and the stars. 

“Will you have your supper now?” she asked again. 

Bleak had not eaten since dawn; yet his raw throat and cracked 
lips still held his mind in abasement before the fact that there was 
actually cool liquid in the world. He had been close to death. Every 
muscle trembled, waves of nausea deluged him from time to time. He 
said he could not eat that night; and the woman left him. 

He felt vividly alone, realizing now that one instinctive reason why 
he wanted supper was that she would have to leave him to get it. 
In going, the woman became of the world, the last vestige of the heaven 
illusion vanishing. ... He saw the huts lying in black under the moon. 
One slender tree had foliage like a cluster of pine-shavings. Now and 
then a firefly opened its shutter; and, except for a certain treed insect 
that emitted the occasional drone of a far sawmill, there was a pro- 
gressive stillness that warned him of suffering hours to come. . . . 
There had been moments of heaven. He never would be quite the same, 
having had them. This came queerly : “ I ’ll never fight for life again 
as I did to-day.” . . . “ My God ! ” he muttered, in the awe of finding 
something almost too good to be true, “ she is coming again ! ” 

It was true. She had brought a pitcher of milk. 

“ This will be good for you. It is food and drink,” she said. “ I 
did not think you could take food to-night.” 

Bleak slowly originated the idea that the woman was food and 
drink. Exactly that, and something more — but he was far from saying 
so. . . . In his weakness, his eyes smarted. The symptom was so remote 
in his experience that he tried to make himself believe he had no tears. 
The next thing she said brought forth a pair. 

“ It is cooler here. You had better not rise for the present. I will 
not leave you — unless you wish.” 

Something gave way up on the balcony. Bleak heard a sigh with a 
savage quirk at the end. Isobel did not refer to the matter. With 
large labor and humility he got this sentence together: 

“ You are certainly good to me, Senorita. What time is it? ” 

“It’s midnight — and after.” 

“ But you must n’t stay here ! ” he exclaimed. “ I was wonderin’ at 
the look of the moon — thinkin’ it was just afteT supper-time.” 

“ Don’t trouble about what I must do,” La Helada said quietly. 
“ I ’ll take care of you.” 

Bleak began at the horse-race and followed events carefully until 
he had fallen in the afternoon. There was nothing like this in his 
experience, nothing like it in the world before. He was awed. . . . 
Now he remembered his debts and his work. In no way had he made 
ready for the woman’s coming. Nothing about him was fitly prepared. 
Yet he could n’t let her go. The simplest thing when unpleasant thoughts 


Sport of Kings 19 

follow one another too rapidly is to fall asleep. Bleak did this, and 
awoke holding the woman’s hand. 

“You twitch so,” she said. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The woods of the room had a dark, waxy look. Everything was 
sharply clean — except Bleak, who felt the need of many waters. He 
arose to strange discovery. . . . Could he have changed rooms in the 
night? Six-shooter and holster lay within reach of hand, but his 
clothes were gone. In their stead was white clothing of a man easily 
equal to Bleak’s girth, but a foot shorter. Even the garment of the 
wallet was gone. Upon such instigations, the memories of the night and 
of his nurse now flocked. White birds were these. He could not be 
dismayed altogether. 

He shoved the door slightly, and a flood of bird-music arose from 
below. At the far end of the low hall was the bench, the soap-bar, and 
the water-jars. He appeared to have “gangway.” Sunlight came in 
through the vines that trailed from the low-hanging eaves. Only bare 
feet could make a wooden floor shine back at the sun, as did that dark 
ancient wood. In the open bath-comer the floor was tiled and graded 
to drain itself. Bleak risked it. . . . As he bent towelling, moments 
afterward, his heart suddenly melted with a sight below. On the ropes 
back of the fonda his clothing hung, all washed and drying. . . . 

In his room later, he was drawn by a light rapping. The hand 
against the panel outside prevented him from opening wide; the wallet 
was thrust through the slight aperture. A narrow yellow ribbon was tied 
about the leather. Nothing within had been touched. A moment later 
his coffee followed in the same manner. These services helped Bleak 
to organize. It would be easy to get into such habits, he thought. 

. . . The vines breathed sweet fragrance, and a fountain of happiness 
gushed upward from the aviary. 

A singular repose had come to Bleak in the midst of his general 
weakness, except for a certain inchoate and windy feeling below the 
knees. His wrists, too, emerged from the short-sleeved coat like formi- 
dable foreign members. ... A gurgle of soft laughter from an unseen 
place raked him like a spur, but it was silenced by a ringing slap. The 
woman of the dark hours came forth. She did not lift her eyes in 
murmuring her greeting, but touched his elbow directing him to 
the hammock. 

She was slender and supple of movement; dark brows and darker 
lashes made her cheeks seem fair. Bleak was speechless. Had she 
been withered and shapeless, he would have been emotional from 
gratitude — but this splendid mysterious woman ! . . . She took him to 
the hammock again, brought eggs and cakes and more coffee to a wicker 
table at the side. 


20 


Sport of Kings 

The fondista came forth, bowing to his belt. From certain corre- 
sponding individualities of the clothes he now wore, and the figure of 
the man before him, Bleak recognized the owner; and from a certain 
richness of the eyes and fineness of feature in suggestion, rather than 
fact, he also recognized the father of a woman. . . . The good God 
knew it was one more hot day. 

The fondista remarked this tentatively. He appeared to accept 
an immortal obligation since Bleak agreed. . . . Who was he, God knew, 
that the illustrious stranger should honor his meagre and altogether 
impossible house? 

This was rather a deep question. In brief and general terms, how- 
ever, Bleak expressed that the pleasure was all his. A cigarette and a 
cigar were now lit, and both offered. Bleak felt strange foreign 
flourishes in his arms and back as he accepted the shorter smoke. The 
conviction now formed that Areola had been expecting a messiah, and 
that his coming had fulfilled the prophecy. The strength of this idea 
precluded the mentioning of horse-races for the present. . . . Amenities 
lagged; wine was brought; the fondista withdrew from the glorified 
circle of his guest to the humbler shadows of the wine-room. . . . 
At intervals there was the shine of radiant eyes from the shadowed 
doorway. By means of a series of hooks, the hammock followed the shade 
of the wide stone porch, and the elder sister sat by. 

Bleak had come home to his own country. There was a lull in the 
soft hot air, in the cigarettes, in the wine and food, the length of day, 
the voice and services of the woman . . . only the far-off laughter of 
Marie was disturbing, and the voices of the young men who approached 
in the shadows of evening — the slim young men who circled around the 
big American, as jackals about a honey-gorged bear. 

Three or four days passed like a dream. Night seemed to awaken the 
village. In the cool of dawn the ox-carts would go by, at dusk returning, 
the weary drivers goading viciously with their long steel -pointed poles. 
Then the naked babies would come forth in the settling dust, and the 
maidens. Here and there in a doorway, you would know by the flare of 
a match that a youth was watching the senoritas, as he inhaled his 
cigarette. . . . 

Bleak’s heart was unerringly drawn to the elder sister, but he often 
watched Marie, his match-making instinct awakened. She was rightly 
alive only in the dusks, but Isobel was a tireless saint in the days — and 
a princess ineffable for the evenings. 

As Areola differed from Sodom, so Isobel was different from those 
women he had known and feared. She had broken the spell of his 
sex-separateness. She had found him helpless. In everything she 
was wiser and more cunning than he expected; each day she was a new 
Isobel with stronger, stranger entwinements. 


Sport of Kings 21 

“ Sodom is sure a sort o’ h alongside o’ this here Areola/’ 

Bleak mused. 

And yet Sodom now called him like an unfinished task. Bleak did n’t 
know* exactly why; but Sodom was his arena. One can only detach 
oneself from such by conquering all comers. Bleak had not begun to 
conquer; and here in Areola his natural lassitude had been warmed and 
fed. Days drew on into ten before he was roused. Even his dreams had 
been too weak to sustain the future, and indolence had clothed the 
hopes of to-morrow. Of course, he had been badly burned, body and 
brain, on that terrible day; one is not swiftly restored after such 
suffering. But La Helada made him over anew; and it was she who 
gave him the first inkling that life had whipped him badly. Not that she 
discovered any failing. She would not have listened with mercy for the 
teller, to any story of his defeats. Bleak was brought home to the dingy 
shanty of self, because the woman believed it to be a spacious mansion. 

The mail-carrier had come in from the southwest and was refreshing 
himself in the wine-room with the fondista. Bleak heard the word 
caballo. Of course there were other horses besides the little steel-dust 
mare that Killjoy had lost, but the word started Bleak to swimming 
out of somnolence. This is what he heard from the pleasant gloom 
among the casks: 

. . The young man’s horse is very pretty. He has consented to 
race Delcante’s Beata. Of course he does not expect to win. His 
mount is very young and untried, you know — but he has some money — 
and the race is to be run in Arecibo ” 

So much was the pith of an hour’s fine-print conversation over vino 
Jerez of age and good report. . . . Bleak was deeply shaken by the 
luck of the thing: Arecibo was not on the main trail to San Miguel. He 
would have been a hundred miles south on the road to San Miguel now, 
had it not been for the woman and the desert. Arecibo was thirty miles 
over the hills to the southwest. . . . The name “ Larry ” was not 
mentioned, but the picture in the mail-carrier’s mind balanced the one in 
Bleak’s; except that the man who brought this race to Arecibo was not 
spoken of exactly as a stranger. 

All day, as he lay in the hammock, Bleak’s thoughts were on the 
trail again. If to-morrow were fine, he would set out for Arecibo. That 
night he shut the door of the wine-room upon himself and the 
fondista and asked for his “ how-much?” 

The old man looked humiliated, rubbed his hands in emotion, and 
sunk his head between his shoulders. Disavowing Bleak’s language 
altogether, he prayed to be allowed to go forth upon his life-business. 
God knew he was dismayed with honor already. . . . Bleak went back 
to his hammock quite undone. The day and its climax had been keen. 
La Helada came and sat down beside him. 

“ I heard you,” she said. “ Why did you not tell me ? ” 


22 


Sport of Kings 

“ I was going to — now.” 

“ Why did you tell him first ? ” 

“ It was the simple matter of the account.” 

“ Do you think I would let you pay in my house ? ” she asked. 
“ What is mine is yours.” 

Bleak contemplated the ten days. 

“But your father keeps the inn ” 

“ Bah l — it is mine too. . . .You should have told me first. Why 
do you go to Arecibo ? ” 

Bleak was staring up at the sagging and ancient tiles, worn from 
erosion, that overhung the porch. He was about to answer flippantly, 
but felt the burn of blood in his cheek, and knew that she was watching 
him with intensity. He now spoke carefully regarding the matter that 
had brought him to Mexico. 

“ And you think this is the man ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“But he may kill you.” 

La Helada said it calmly, as one of the remoter chances. Bleak 
had tried to deal lightly with this exigency to Killjoy, and had failed so 
deplorably that he was disposed to be tender on the subject. 

“ I won’t give him no chance,” he said. “ I ’ve come a long ways to 
corral that kid. He ’s quick as a dart an’ full of tricks as a monte- 
deck, but I ’ll see him first.” 

The woman had expected him to disdain the idea of trouble. Bleak 
felt her sudden feverishness, saw her eyes gathering brightness in the 
early night. 

“ Why don’t you say you are going to take me ? ” she demanded. 

Bleak sat up. He tried to speak, but his throat was n’t ready. 

“Why don’t you speak?” 

“ Come on — let ’s walk,” he said hoarsely. 

They walked out to the end of the village, and there were no words 
until she halted at the place where she had found him. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Bleak was crippled by the idea that he had done her some injustice. 
From the first da)', he had expected to come back to Areola. He told 
her so. 

“ Men always say they will come back,” said La Helada, 

“ Not me — I never said it to a woman before,” Bleak replied 
desperately, far from knowing what an inspiration it was. 

She was a tropical woman again, effulgently feminine and close 
to tears. 

Bleak told her in his continually surprising Spanish of his debts 
in Sodom, and of the race in Nineveh. 


Sport of Kings 23 

. “ This reward will help out,” he added. “ Then I ’ll come back to 
Areola. . . . And ” 

He struggled with idioms. Literally translated, his final sentence 
was, “ You can gamble regardless on the fact that I ’ll sure come 
back hot-foot.” 

“ But why leave me ? I would not be a burden to you.” 

Bleak thought of taking a native bride to Arecibo — to arrest a horse- 
thief. In the first place, public expectation was booted and spurred 
for a horse-race. A stranger coming in to stop this was on the wrong 
road to become a town-idol. . . . He told her he was n’t ready — that he 
njust make good before he returned to her. His stress appealed vitally. 
Bleak could not know that his strength and resistance and words were 
a bath of power to her. “ This ain’t no pleasure-trip,” he finished. 
“ I have n’t earned you yet. Besides, we need the reward.” 

Her voice trailed up to him sweetly now : 

“ I ’ve been waiting years for you — waiting lonely, waiting all 
alone ” 

“ Waitin’ for me, Lady?” 

La Helada made her confession then — what the old priest had said. 
It was Bleak’s initiation into the greater mysteries. Sometimes a boy, 
sometimes a monarch, he was before her. All the tyranny of Sodom 
passed from him, and a novel and lifting sense of self and reality came. 

“ I knew the first minute — you had me,” he said brokenly. “ Nothing 
like it ever came my way till I hit Areola. I ’m all turned around. 

. . . Everything that seemed big — seems little — and you — so little — 
you ’re — » — ” 

He had to finish in English, “ the whole works.” 

" Whole wor-lcsa f” she repeated in ecstasy. 

" Todo mundo he finished briefly. 

“ Ah ! ” she said, laughing. . . . And then he saw the moonlight 
on her face, and the delayer lost himself at last in the lovely passion 
of it all. 


CHAPTER IX. 


La Helada watched him go. 

Never in her life had she been given the slightest reason to trust 
the word of man, except on the one matter of the priest’s visioning — 
but such a good priest is n’t a man when he ’s old. . . . She knew she 
was to suffer now. Her father spoke to her with great care and delicacy. 
Marie did not speak at all, but her thought was: “ He will hever 
come back.” 

La Helada felt that thought. It burned her, filled her with hatred. 
Since Marie held her peace, however, there was nothing to say nor do. 
. . . Bleak was within view of the upper balcony for more than an hour. 
Her thoughts flew over his few words. All his words had moved in 


24 


Sport of Kings 

the same wa y: all had meant that he was simple and true and needed 
her. He did not express gladness and gratefulness in the way of her 
people — but still with peculiar charm for her heart. And yet Isobel, 
who had waited so long, felt the old fires of her being flame higher than 
ever. The American had filled her emptiness. Halls of her heart rang 
with lamentations now, less because of the absence of a day or two, than 
because of her own doubts, and the limitations of the male, to which 
she could not be blind. This was emptiness intolerable. 

Into the southwest toward Arecibo, Bleak made his way all that day. 
It was partly a river journey, and the trail was clear. The mail-carrier 
made it back and forth every ten days. A bit of jungle; a stream, crowded 
with life; dim coolness in the hollows between the hills; flash of birds 
and the clap of heavy leaves, the calling, clinging mystery of La Helada 
who loved him — Larry, the steel-dust mare, Killjoy, telegraphs, rewards, 
Arcola-and-the-nights-again — then northward and the world’s work, 
and the world’s woman. 

Work was salubrious in the distance. Bleak would never again be 
shiftless nor uncentred. There was something to work for: the respect 
of Sodom, but more than that — the respect of the woman. He had this 
now. But he must keep it. That ’s the trick. . . . Thirty miles — it was 
not long except for the occasional pang that every step widened the dis- 
tance between him and the woman. Once he laughed aloud at the way 
it had all come about. Then days before, and he had been one of the 
many alone who do not know what life means, nor what work is for — 
lonely mavericks who lean upon the opinions and the institutions of 
men. Then he had fallen. Close to death and with all his wits away — 
she had stolen upon him, come into his heart to live. He pictured him- 
self coming to the fonda at Areola in his usual health, taking his supper 
and wine in desperate self-consciousness, knowing the eyes of the girls 
were watching from the shadows. 

“ If I ’d drunk enough wine,” he mused, “ I might have dared to 
look at one of them — probably at that little spitfire Marie. Oh, Lord, 
I would n’t have known Isobel ! A feller has to be knocked silly to see 
a real woman ! . . . An’ she wanted to come along ” 

No, the thirty miles were none too long. Bleak was just a little awed 
by this fresh acquaintance with himself. 

He reached the town in the dusk. Arecibo was on the travel-lines. 
Business had not departed from this fonda. There were voices in the 
room of rum, and a hall in which the smell of garlic blended with that 
of cocoa-butter with an almost predestined affinity. Bleak drew the 
proprietor aside to inquire about the horse-race. All that the mail- 
carrier had brought was good word and true. . . . And where were this 
horseman and the little brown mare ? 

The innkeeper drew him to the rear-porch, and pointed through 
the twilight. Bleak saw a trail that began at the lowest stones of the 


25 


Sport of Kings 

porch and joined another in the immediate distance. He was told to 
follow the other until he came to a certain stable set in the side of a 
hill, the lamp of which would be visible before he arrived. . . . The 
innkeeper offered to send a member of his household, but Bleak allowed 
he could find the place. He asked if the horseman camped there with 
his runner. The innkeeper replied that the two were seldom apart. 

Bleak resolved to bathe and sup before setting out to turn the point 
of his mission. 

An hour later, at the bend of the trail behind the fonda, he saw the 
light, and made for it through the almost starless dusk of early evening. 

. . . The stable was dug-out, the roof braced with heavy and ancient 
timbers. The lamp rested on a box near the buttressed opening; and 
upon the straw, stretched out to the light, was the soft-eyed Larry. He 
was reading a paper-covered book. It was thus that Lincoln read and 
learned to rule himself before ruling a nation. 

Beyond in the shadows were the round and well-remembered flanks 
of the racing mare, ashine in the feeble gleam. Presently her entire 
conformation filled the eyes without, her head raised, ears pricked. Her 
deliciously sensitive nostrils caught something amiss. Larry read on. 
It was all so snug and content. “ Hill-side manger in lamp-light.” . . . 
“ Horse-thief at home.” . . . “ Outlaw improving his mind ” — there 
were many names for the picture. 

Larry was faithful to his brown- jewel. Miss Mincing was fit as she 
had been in Nineveh. There was simplicity about it all that gripped 
the replenished soul of the sheriff. His heart began to thump, not with 
fear, but with a softer emotion of pity. It was a shame to take Larry 
so easily. There would be no interest in a telling of this sort. . . . And 
the boy looked so happy. Perhaps he really loved the little steel-dust 
mare. Bleak winced. The four weeks’ trailing were forgotten in the 
queer combustible faculties he carried. Perhaps Larry loved a girl 
somewhere and was out defying men in order to make a stake for her. 
Bleak’s throat was dry. He hadn’t cared much for Killjoy at best. 
The three hundred miles of search were erased from Bleak’s mental map 
at that moment. 

Miss Mincing could stand the strain no longer. She snorted softly. 
It was like blowing through a tube into a bowl of water. Now at Bleak’s 
left in the thicket the forgotten saddle-pony nickered. Larry arose, and 
Bleak faced him at the door. 

“ Hello.” 

“ Hello.” 

“ Before we talk, son,” said Bleak, “ I ’ll take this little shooter of 
yours, an’ the knife — more accordin’ to custom than hard feelin’s, 
though 1 did hear a whole lot about your slick handlin’ of same — since 
that last drink in Nineveh.” 

Larry fell back to a crouch, lip-lifted, elbows out, his two hands 


2G 


Sport of Kings 

queerly stretched and poised over his hips. There he stood for an 
instant, the impression sinking into Bleak’s brain of something deadly, 
cat-like, un-American. So much of it was in those swift outstretched 
fingers. Bleak’s gun broke the pose. 

“ Hello, Mister Sheriff. You frighten-a me. What is — matter? 
What is wanted?” 

“You are, my boy — an’ your lady-friend yonder,” said Bleak, who 
had found an extra knife and a small new-fangled gun, not only a 
novelty but a reproach to one of Arizona upbringing. It was the pair 
of knives, however, that helped him to remember his own affairs — Sodom, 
debts, Areola, the woman, reward — the knives, and that peculiar draw- 
back into a crouch, and the small, wide-stretched, knobbed-tipped fingers. 

“ We come with you, but what for ? ” Larry smiled in the old winning 
way, that restored Nineveh and all of its appointments. 

Bleak laughed back at him, and followed his eyes to the mare. He 
couldn’t hold hard thoughts and look at her. The arched head of the 
rare little runner was turned to the boyish voice — turned to the draw of 
the loose halter. Demurely attentive she was, and playful. 

Bleak cleared his voice. “ Quit stallin’, Larry,” he said, but it 
was n’t the growl he intended. “ Speakin’ deferential in the presence 
of your consort, and acknowledgin’ her speed and gameness, you sure 
wrecked up a home a whole lot to get this lady to go with you.” 

“ I know not what to speak,” Larry said, shrugging his shoulders. 
“ Did she not win fair from Lazarus-old-horse ? ” 

“ True for you — she did that.” 

“Why take knife an’ pistol?” 

“Now, as to that,” said Bleak, “that’s a pure personality I owe 
myself, havin’ heard you bad spoke of — an’ with surprise an’ pain.” 

The mare blew into the bubble-bowl again. Larry’s eyes danced 
with a fresh idea. “I see, Mister Sheriff. You come to follow the 
race — and take back much money.” 

Bleak smiled in keen enjoyment. “Now, thar’s somethin’ I hadn’t 
thought on. If I war a single-minded man — and not sheriff back in the 
river-county — that might appear as an openin’ of promise. Seein’ as 
how we stacked up, though, son, we ’d better begin to make Areola ” 

“ And what of race — day after to-morr’ ? ” Larry asked with despair. 

“ Some folks might say there was a gamblin’ proposition on that 
remark,” Bleak observed. “As fur me, I can’t see a chance of a race 
in the next two days.” 

Larry sat up. There was nothing in his look to remind Bleak of that 
emorable moment of his surprise. Boyish petulance, extreme vexation, — 
but no hell-hot devil was uncovered. 

“ This is unpleasant, Mister Sheriff,” he said deprecatingly. 


Sport of Kings 


27 


CHAPTER X. 

Moments had passed, but the two had not changed positions. Whether 
there would be a race in Arecibo on the day after to-morrow, was now a 
gambling proposition. Bleak was fluctuating, or rather dangling im- 
potently, between his original mission and the cause of Larry. The 
latter’s story had come out without a flaw, to the following effect : 

He had worked two years for Renney of Finchville, a man violently 
addicted to horse-flesh. A series of calamitous defeats up Tucson way 
shortly after Larry’s service began had levelled Renney down to a small 
string of runners, including some young stock, and a large string of 
debts, past maturity. It was then that the old man came frankly to his 
trainer, jockey, and stable-boy, saying: “ Larry, there’s no money in the 
world for wages, and none in sight, so you ’d better go.” The boy now 
exposed his passion to own one of the young things of indefinite future 
which cumbered the herd. Renney wept with delight, as Larry told it. 

Miss Mincing, at that time a two-year-old, was bad in front with a 
splint that lamed her tendons. She was variously delicate as well, and, 
though incomparably bred, was far from coming into her own. Larry 
told the old man that he would work during a period of eighteen months 
for his board and the ownership of the brown filly. Renney responded 
in accepting that while the boy could shape up a horse for a race, and sit 
him through it, he had an eye for horse-flesh like a sea-cook. And that 
was the extent of the contract. 

There was not a moment of the narrative in which Larry made him- 
self appear lamb-like, nor emotionally cutpouring toward the old man. 
Absence of this gave the story sanction to Bleak. Larry said he had 
always seen Miss Mincing as unbeatable. ... He blistered the splint 
and turned her loose. She came back to him clean as a new-minted 
dollar. Then he worked her out — always under a pull when Renney was 
about. The latter, who half respected the opinions of his servant, looked 
for a burst of speed that never was shown — except in certain twilights 
and dawnings afar from the Finchville paddock. “ You ’re going to have 
a nice brood-mare there, Larry, some time,” he said with sarcasm. 

In due time Larry was ready to depart. He alone knew how good 
Miss Mincing had become. Times were now better for Renney, and he 
offered to pay up Larry’s back wages for the maiden. 

“ Did n’t you tell him she was worth too much to you as a brood- 
mare ? ” Bleak asked at this point. 

Larry held himself rigidly to the tale. “ He not like for me to go,” 
he finished. “ One day big open race in Las Vegas, he ask me enter 
Mincing. But I know he make trouble when I win. . . . That was 
wrong — to race in Nineveh. Mister Renney know Lazarus-old-horse. 
Always he want to go up and beat that horse.” 

“ What’s eatin’ this Killjoy? You worked for the filly, an’ then 


28 


Sport of Kings 

fetched her ’way down here to pick up money he ’d never come after ” 

Bleak was stopped by the boy’s lifted eyelids. 

“ You don’t compr’end, Mister Sheriff. A man raise the horse all 
his life — then comes one small horse that answer all the worry and care.” 

“ Oh, I see,” said Bleak. “ It ’s a disease. All bets, all contracts, 
are off, when a gem is cut. The small item that Killjoy gabe you the 
filly don’t count?” 

“ Mister Kenney say I stole filly and send sheriff after,” Larry 
mused pitifully. 

Bleak was trying to understand the disease; and making progress. 
Supposing, his thoughts ran, an old prospector had a bundle of claims 
along a certain river, and owed his side-kicker money he couldn’t pay; 
suppose the side-kicker chose one of the claims to cancel the debt — and 
the claim proved an El Dorado . . . yes, it was a test of a man’s out- 
and out, yes-and-no honesty. . . . And just at this moment Bleak’s 
reflections broke into a realization of explosive character : if Larry could 
substantiate his story, there might not be any reward. ... La Helada 
and the nest-egg? 

Bleak’s brain felt bruised and sere. 

“ It ’s a good story, young feller,” he said, “ but really it ain’t none 
of my business. I come here to fetch you back. You can tell ’em up in 
Finch ville. If Killjoy has gone loco over you pickin’ the proper young 
one, they ’ll stand by you up in Finch ville. I ’m to get you there ” 

“ And what of race — day after to-morr’ ? ” 

Bleak was silent. Even in his own disorder, he was sorry for the 
boy, who now caught a new angle. 

“ Did Mister Kenney say — give reward ? ” 

“ Sure — eight hundred.” 

“ Hah ! ” There was a sudden chill in the night air, the way Larry 
said it. “ He think I fight arres’ — then you shoot for kill, and take 
back Mincing mare alone ” 

“ H ! I don’t shoot careless,” Bleak said stiffly. 

“ Some shoot quick at Mexican boy.” 

Further silence. They heard the saddle-pony cropping nearer, 
occasionally clearing the dust from his muzzle. There was much far 
listening on the part of the little mare — as if the distances were filled 
with messages, which she alone could interpret and only by the utmost 
concentration. 

“ Mister Sheriff — these men of Arecibo excite themselves — when you 
proven’ race.” 

“ I ’ve thought of that,” said Bleak. 

“ They ask see papers — requisitoria ” 

“ They ’re welcome,” said Bleak, on pure bluff. 

Larry now appeared to dislike the present phase of the matter as 
much as the American. 


Sport of Kings 29 

“ Sugar and coffee planter all come — bring much money,” Larry 
suggested. “ Delcante’s Beata — a verree good horse.” 

Beata as good a horse as Lazarus? ” Bleak asked. 

“ I think — yes,” the boy said judicially. “ You take four hundred 
dollars — you make eight 

“ I was waitin’ for that thar. It sure was done delicate ” 

“ I go back with good cheer — day after to-morr’ afternoon.” 

“ Do I draw, you might be considerable troublesome — if we started, 
say, at sun-up to-morrow ? ” 

Larry smiled engagingly, patting his empty holster and knife-sheath. 
His look seemed to say, “ Who am I to make trouble for a sheriff from 
mighty America ? ” Bleak studied the expression. 

“ Day after to-morr’ on our way,” Larry said enticingly. “ I double 
on eight hundred — you double on four hundred ” 

“ Which means you ’ve got twelve hundred in your kick, at present ? ” 
Bleak said slowly. 

Larry’s face looked haggard, but he was game. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“ You ’d better hand it over for bail,” said Bleak. “ I ’ll rest better 
durin’ the delay, and then I can run your racin’-book.” 

Larry arose and went into the manger. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Larry, in fact, leaped lightly to the manger, and brought forth his 
fortune. . . . Mentally, Bleak was off the ground. He had n’t looked 
for this. His talk for the past five minutes had not been personally 
conducted. The horse-thief had handled him. He felt an agonizing 
need for the woman. He was n’t safe alone. . . . Bleak saw it now. 
The thought of missing the reward had blown up his feathery wits. He 
was further scattered by the temptation of the four hundred, which the 
boy had so softly insinuated. . . . Then here was twelve hundred 
(American money) that was to be doubled, if he did not insist upon the 
policy of blind haste. And Bleak believed the story. It was reasonable, 
and had been done with such decent self-repression. 

Larry held out a leather bag. 

“ You bet money on race, Mister Sheriff.” 

“ How much is here ? ” Bleak was merely parrying. 

“ Twenty-five hundred — Mexican money.” 

“ Sit down and help me count it,” said Bleak. His voice was like 
another’s — like Nig Fantod’s voice when he was winning. He could n’t 
keep his mind on the counting. The important and final conception 
of his performance shaped. He saw it in the dim future as a Sodom 
classic. He could hear Bertie Cotton talking: 

“ This here Bleak was sheriff and went over yonder to get a hoss- 
thief . Grand little steel-dust mare — the stolen lioss. Bleak came up 
with his man two days before the lioss-thief was gullin’ off a race . Say, 


30 


Sport of Kings 

d’ye s’ pose our sheriff was goin to spoil that hoss-race, Mister ? Not 
our sheriff ! He just took the money away from the outlaw — and handled 
the racin’ book his-self.” 

And yet Bleak could n’t reverse. Larry had been game to the seeds — 
never faltered more than a second. Bleak could n’t see that the tempta- 
tion was common enough, and that a better man would have carried the 
fight now into the open. . . . Larry had dazzled him. Together in the 
candle-light, they counted the money, the amount being as stated. 

Throughout the day preceding the race, servants rode down from the 
hills with the famous straw-hats of the planters. These were freshly 
pipe-clayed in Arecibo and carried back, to return the following day on 
the heads of the sugar and coffee kings. All the surrounding haciendas 
emptied into Arecibo, which town took an a formal holiday aspect on the 
morning of the race. Delcante’s Beata was well-liked and well-backed. 
Bleak was refusing money an hour before the start. . . . All the reds 
in the world moved in the little plaza — for the senoritas had come forth 
at last by day. 

There was one group of young men, very gaudily dressed, narrow 
of loin and narrow of eye. They seemed old companions to Larry — the 
breed from which he had come. They laughed at the brown mare and 
her chance; appeared to put much silver on Beata ; yet were deeply 
fascinated by the strange runner. . . . Bleak had no cause to complain 
— neither yesterday, the night before, nor last night. Always Larry 
had been at hand, quiet, courteous, and sorrowful. 

Bleak was shattered. For him disaster was in the air. The woman 
had expected him back last night. Already he was causing the woman 
to suffer. He could think of everything when it was too late. Some 
speechless inner entity invariably showed him afterward what a failure 
he was, carefully weighing his deficiencies of performance. . . . Bleak 
had deeply realized it was not conducive to his own peace of mind to 
cause worry for La Helada. He felt that Areola was disrupted, and 
the middle-distance of Mexico generally. 

He had never fallen so far in his own estimation, having clinfbed 
recently to new ranges of conduct. The ten days at Areola had shown 
him things differently. He had begun to see that it is more important 
to keep up one’s front for oneself — than for a set of townsmen. Bleak 
felt the need of making good back in Sodom — but far more to make good 
for the woman, who was like a better part of him in his thoughts. . . . 
Yet twelve hours from her kiss, he had compromised with the man he was 
sent after. Little Larry had been too much for him. Bleak had granted 
his own shortcomings many times, but never with the force and point that 
drove home now. He saw he had to be made over again ; that he was n’t 
safe to be trusted alone; and thoughts of the woman ached in his breast. 

And now Bleak carried the town’s money, and the horses were in 
the sun. Some big disaster was coming. He deserved it, wondered 


31 


Sport of Kings 

finally if it were not a dream about the woman loving. . . . She had 
said so. She had waited years. ... It seemed very far away — that even- 
ing of the Revelation at the edge of Areola, when she had told him what 
the priest said . . . and the sweetness that had come up from her, as if 
she had gathered strange flowers along the lonely years ! ... It was 
almost too good ever to come again. He had forfeited the fineness and 
decency that would bring her to him again. Now that he had not come 
as promised, she would see it all as it was. She would have watched for 
his coming last night; to-day the anguish of expectation would depart; 
she would not care whether he came. It had all been illusion — the beauty 
she had seen. He would seek her late to-night — try to make her cherish 
the old illusion, but it would be strange and alien. ... He moved about 
in the crowd, as one in a dream. He was trying to make the woman see 
that he was the same creature she had loved and tended; that he would 
try and try again — try until at last he did not fail. . . . 

Larry and the Mexican lad riding Beata trotted out to the starting- 
point — three quarters of a mile down the road. The finish-line was in the 
plaza of the town, where the whole population was gathered. Larry’s 
Mexican friends went out to the start with him. They whipped the lad 
with taunts. Bleak had watched the little fellow bowed over the brown 
mare’s mane at the last moment. Laughing and quiet — thus he had 
seen Larry first; thus he was at his best. The old theme of that day 
in Nineveh played again in Bleak’s mind. 

He was sure Beata would win. They would go broke together, and 
hit the trail back to Areola and beyond. It was not that he did injustice 
to Miss Mincing in this sense of her defeat. Something would happen 
to make her lose. For Bleak, disaster was in the air. 

He heard the high tension of the voices in a distant corner of con- 
sciousness. The loss of the woman — his seeking to restore the old 
illusion, not of his worthiness, but of his fierce hunger and need for her — 
this was nearer. . . . Isobel was not obdurate. She listened, but could 
not understand. It was gone from her — the thing she had seen in 
him. . . . She was gone from him — this was the tragedy. He had 
failed once too often — failed after she had shown him the clear plain way. 
The least a man can do, he thought, is to be honest. He had fallen before 
a few cheap complications. 

There was a scream from the women. The horses were away. . . . 
Hundreds craned over the parted path to the finish, where Bleak stood 
with Larry’s money and the town’s money heavy in his hand, but heavier 
in his soul. He saw the far flicker in the dust, just a flicker in the 
^ us t — a pair of racing horses — and here was town and country intent 
with some deep enchantment upon the fibre of them. . . . All his dreams 
of sickness and the disorder of nights were real, compared to this living 
mystery of a town at play — terrible at its play. All the color, and every 
pitch of voice, were unnatural, but the night of the Revelation, at the 


32 Sport of Kings 

edge of Areola, and the sweetness of the woman — God, how real were 
these ! 

Bleak was cold to the result. He expected to lose. There would be 
no shame upon the brown mare. Something would happen to make 
her lose. That was part of the disaster. Perhaps with defeat, this doom 
and dusk would clear from his mind. Perhaps he could find himself 
then — when this load of money and nightmarish unreality was lifted. 
. . . The horses were nearer — like flags blown in a mist. The air was 
torn and tortured with the voices of the people in frantic holiday tumult. 
Bleak had never known before the terror of a strange people at play, to 
an alien who has lost his own. His spirit was tossed in the empty 
violence of voices. 

Silence. It was as if he had sunk into the pelvis of the world — 
strange light and enchanted silence. He was too far away in thought 
to catch the real meaning. . . . The woman’s face was turned away. She 
could not understand. . . . Drumming of hoofs. Out of the yellow 
earth came the brown mare, running low, light — running as if set for 
a leap — running alone. . . . And the face of Larry flashing by, and the 
quiet smile. 

Bleak ran after the brown mare. Thrice his lips moved before he 
could find words: 

“We must make Areola to-night.” 

“ All right, Mister Sheriff,” Larry answered, as he hopped down and 
drew the muzzle of the mare into the hollow of his bridle-arm. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Granting that Killjoy was now in Santo Tomas, according to 
schedule, he could reach Areola (where Bleak had planned to hold Larry 
and Miss Mincing) within seven or eight days. Part of this journey 
was by rail. Bleak had already telegraphed. ... It was not yet three 
in the afternoon when Larry and the sheriff set out from the silenced 
village of Arecibo. The flaring reds and the fresh-clayed hats were gone, 
but the wine- and rum-centres were still running the race. The Mexicans 
were good losers, but the character of the brown mare’s winning, her 
super-equine speed, had left a general feeling of having been looted 
and shamed. 

Larry, riding very light, for he carried neither funds nor arms, and 
in his racing saddle, was ahead on the gently cooling conquistada. The 
burdened Bleak rode the buckskin saddle-pony. Nearly five hours of 
daylight were left — enough to see them to the fonda at Areola in the 
usual course. The only pressure of resistance that Bleak had encountered 
since Larry furnished his own bail two nights before was now in the 
matter of speed. The boy held up the mare, insisting that she must 
cool and get her second wind, before breaking from a walk. He promised 


33 


Sport of Kings 

to make better time the last half of the journey, and very good time the 
last five miles. Miss Mincing was not properly a saddle-horse, the boy 
repeated ; moreover, she had done her work already this day. 

“ Thar ain’t no disposition here to deny that, son,” Bleak said gently. 
“ But you ’re fussin’ up the little lady holdin’ her in, it seems to me — 
who ain’t got no authority to tell you a whole lot about hosses.” 

Larry was n’t irritable at all, but the speed did not increase. Bleak 
was inclined to be humble before the pair. They had done their work 
so well ; they were finished bread-winners, which was more than he. And 
Bleak was dazed yet from the marvellous finish. Eight hundred of the 
money in his pocket was his — if he would take it. The decision lodged 
in his brain. It would neither go in deeper nor emerge. He wanted to 
ask the woman what to do; yet he knew that a man would decide for 
himself. It was a bit uncanny to him. He would not have thought it 
wrong two weeks before; he could have accepted the slightly smutted 
windfall — even he with his fool’s reputation for being honest. But that 
sort of fluency was strangely crippled in the past few days. ... It was 
a cheap thing, this handful of money, compared to what he suffered 
since the woman’s face seemed to turn away. 

It struck him now — a possible covenant with himself. He would 
renounce any part of the Arecibo winnings ! Actually, there was trace 
of a smile in the world again ! Then the debts in Sodom recurred, the 
need, the nest-egg — and Bleak truckled. He would ask her what to do. 
. . . You see clearly how he needed the iron heel; how his case literally 
challenged it. 

They were deep in the river-bottom, between five and six in the 
afternoon — the same jungle which had charmed and astonished the 
awakened Bleak on the way over. The growths were very thick; cool- 
ness and the queer breaks in the silence which birds and leaves made 
seemed to charm the spirit of the loitering outlaw to a sort of ecstasy. 

Bleak watched him curiously, knowing full well they would finish 
the journey in that utter darkness before the stars really unveil. He 
did not, however, guess in the remotest way what sublimate form of hell 
was back of that tanned and wrinkled brow. . . . 

The water was sludgy beneath. Bleak could not deny, even in his 
anger at dawdling, that the wet marsh was vitality and expansion to the 
desert-dried hoofs of the little mare. Larry held her for precious 
moments where the black muck folded about her ankles, and expatiated 
meanwhile upon a boyhood dream of gold to be found in this hollow 
between the hills. ... He had come here long ago. This was his 
country. In a little village lost to the world in a pocket of hills beyond 
Arecibo, he had first regarded the light and found it excellent, but the 
darkness better. He had ranged all these hills with herds as a boy. 
. . . God, how he had hated sheep ! God, how he had loved horses ! . . . 

Larry appeared to talk to the little mare quite as much as to Bleak, 


34 


Sport of Kings 

who sauntered behind leading the saddle-pony. He petted her, praised 
her running, — talked of days spent together, and of days to come. 

Bleak was wondering if the little things of speech like this would 
hold a woman’s heart — a laborious idea for him. He did not offer his 
decision as world-truth, but he finally concluded that Miss Mincing 
would have loved the jungle journey more, had she been a woman. . . . 
That was it — they were kids excursioning together, Larry and the brown 
mare. Leaves and water, shadows, birds, and coolness, — all were fun 
for them ; and how they could pull together when a race was to be run ! 
The pair had fascinated Bleak from that first day in Nineveh — but they 
awed him now — playing together along the soft wet ways, as if he were 
forgotten. So it was they did their journeys together from race to race, 
he thought. As for himself, he was well mated with the buckskin burden- 
bearer. . . . Bleak wished he could take the world’s trails with the 
woman, in a spirit like this of utter forgetfulness — pulling together as 
now in their play -times, apart in the soft river-bottoms, in the coolness 
and sweetness of coming night. 

Queerly enough, just now he remembered the first night in Arecibo, 
the evil, distended hands poised above the hips. Larry’s face was turned 
from him. It was a certain crouch of the shoulders that had brought 
back the picture — the round loose shoulders, the cat-like softness and 
resiliency. . . . And now Bleak forgot the whole matter of the man and 
mare, and their exquisite intimacy, — forgot even the sinister accompani- 
ment of his mind, too deep for him to catch the notes. . . . Away on 
his own failure was Bleak, even to the recent truckling. He had left it 
to the woman — the decision about the eight hundred — a lazy half-man’s 
way. There was an instant throb of stimulus now, urging him to decide 
for himself, urging him to have no dealing with this money — to face the 
world with the earned reward if he got it. . . . This was his last chance, 
but Bleak’s stamina oozed back. He did not cinch the decision. . . . 

“ Hai, Mister Sheriff ! ” Larry called. 

Bleak led up. Larry was standing by the flanks of the mare at the 
entrance of a narrow break in the thicket. They were nearly out of the 
hollow between the hills. 

“ Come on, Larry,” Bleak said briskly. “ We ’ve got to tear off a 
few miles now. This ain’t a ramble no more, son.” 

“ Yes — we ride fast — but you know gold ? ” 

“ Wall, I ’ve looked for it enough — and soon others get it enough ” 

“ This is where — I think long ago — where the gold hid.” 

He pointed at the stony wash-out almost dry now, but where water 
would be deep in the rains — his left forefinger denoting a particular spot 
near the mare’s feet. Bleak bent forward, quickened by the thought 
of the infallibility of Larry’s luck, as it linked with the idea of a gold 
discovery. . . . The signs failed, as he bent closer. He darted a glance 


Sport of Kings 35 

upward just as the brown thumb of the boy stabbed the mare in the 
stifle-joint. 

Bleak heard the squeal, as the mare stretched out. The thud was the 
rending of his own flesh. ... It was black. He was down upon the 
stones where the signs of gold had failed — his body shaking the world. 

. . . There was no light. All that he had ever seen die rushed in the 
black before his eyes — ox, deer, fowls, wild-cat, a woman — all in the 
shaking. 

And Larry was upon him, plucking away the guns and knives, as one 
would draw red brands from a blaze ; and laughing was Larry, his loose 
hands darting around Bleak’s eyes and into his throat. ... He did not 
mean for his victim to be blind yet. He slapped and gouged the cheeks. 
Gray came in the pain — a certain light and immortal astonishment. 
Bleak had already accepted death; this distraction merely held his 
passing gaze — a snarling, hissing mouth, narrow-slitted eyelids, red fire 
beneath, — patches of dead white on the nostrils. . . . 

But why all these grimaces, this pantomine, this mask of fury? It 
did not seem possible that all this was performed for the poor vagaries 
of light left in Bleak’s eyes. There was something of hell’s utmost 
obscenity over the figure, but it did not greatly matter. Bleak was 
choking in his own blood; he would soon go into the easier blackness 
again — in spite of these antics. He smelled a stale den; the laughter 
was throaty, tongueless. 

His lungs were rending for air which the blood shut out. He was 
utterly played from it all, and his eyelids dropped — but the fingers wene 
at them again, tearing them open by the hairs — forcing him to look 
longer, to look at the knife. 

But the knife did not hold Bleak’s attention as the face did. It was 
not Larry’s, but a fiend’s face. The lust of the knife-lover had de- 
bauched it. . . . It laughed, it cocked itself sideways. It bent again, and 
the knife burned the loose skin of Bleak’s throat. The face was cocked 
up again to listen, just as Bleak was quietly drawing away with the sense 
of failure and the woman’s passing. His eyelids were yanked open once 
more . . . and now a shot from the thicket altered everything. 

The face straightened — sobered in boyish wonderment. The fiend 
was erased, as a puff of smoke. Here was Larry again. The knife 
dropped. Larry leaned forward gently— very limp and weary. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

La Helada had watched Bleak until his figure was lost on the road 
to Arecibo. . . . The thrilling illusion of him had not altered, save to 
become more keen and calling. Daughter of the desert-edges, so pene- 
trating in judgment of her own people, wise to look beyond the flaming 


36 


Sport of Kings 

core of passion, so deep to strip to sounding nonentity the glib young 
men with their gaudy apparel and soft hands ; incisive to open the vanities 
of her father, who was disintegrating in a pulp-mass that needed more 
and more wine, and more and more sleep. Yet now she had her own 
dear blindness. 

The hand of the priest had been a wand of dreams. The stranger 
had come. He had been vast and simple, and slow to speak. He had 
not sought to drink nor eat of her bounty — promising to pay and to pray 
afterward. In making much of themselves with words, the men of her 
own people had revealed the intrinsic falsehood of their lives. This 
stranger had made little of himself, had seemed to wonder that she was 
drawn to him. ... La Helada had dreamed much. When one dreams 
and is true, and when one has the courage to w^ait long, holding fast to 
the dreams — one grows to see clearly. Thus La Helada saw clearly and 
was above her people, far from them as the cleansing frost itself — yet she 
saw in Bleak Totten her own good man. 

Her dreams (out of which her vision had come, as the old priest’s 
had come through service and purity) — her dreams gathered in a glow 
about the stranger. He was not as he was to others, in her eyes; all 
his frailties took a brighter lining from her own giving of light; all his 
doubtful silences were hued with reality; stamina was given to his 
unproved resolutions, and a luring tenderness to his falterings. So she 
saw the stranger as she wanted him to be; and the stranger felt her 
lifting inspiration — to be that, and more. 

Bleak had expected to be back in Areola on the evening of the day 
following. There were only desultory conections between* the two towns, 
no wires. Letters were to be relied upon only once in ten days; though 
villagers passing to and fro occasionally carried mails and messages. 
When Bleak did not appear, and as the sun went down on the trail, La 
Helada returned to the edges of the village, where she had found the 
stranger and where he had found her heart ; and there she walked, silently 
praying. 

Since the old priest died, La Helada had not entered the church. 
It was part of the hardness she had put on. No one knew how the denial 
had tortured her, nor with what unutterable longing she remembered the 
face of Mary there in sunlight and candle-light. Isobel did not feel that 
she belonged to the women who came there. (Always a woman was 
kneeling at the feet of Mary.) I,a Helada had not given herself away; 
and it was the women who had given themselves away in passion that 
came to pray and mourn afterward. Isobel had not seen yet that this 
of hers was evil pride — scorn for those less strong: the evil of growing 
strong with scorn. 

So she prayed at the edge of the desert where she had found her 
own; and at length she remembered that her father would sleep, and that 
Marie was left alone. She hurried back to the fonda. The old man 


37 


Sport of Kings 

slept. Little sister had answered the call of the night. La Helcbda cursed 
her father for his drink and his drowsiness. Suddenly she saw Marie 
of the future, body-drawn, bent and spent with babes plucked from the 
fire — little Marie, so sweet to-night, a slave woman among the herds and 
hearths, eyes vague with rebellion, hands like charred wood-knots, her 
heart astray — little Marie like the others stealing in to pray, and all 
for the savage blindness that comes to women in their beauty and efflores- 
cence, when nights like this will not be denied. 

For there were no men in Areola, just drones; there was no love in. 
Areola — just lust. 

. . . Marie came in very quietly — for the night was far gone. She 
feared the sleepless one, more than ever now, because the stranger had 
not come with the dusk. . . . An arm was thrust around her in the 
hallway — and she was led to her room. La Helada held the light to 
her face. 

The younger sister would have replied in kind to fierceness and 
austerity, but was broken by tears and this strange tenderness. Isobel 
had seen more than ever clearly in the hours of waiting; her own suffer- 
ing had made her afraid of herself and pitiful for others. 

“ If you could only have waited,” she moaned, “ you might have 
gone with us — but you would not wait ” 

“ Gone with you?” Marie repeated in wonder. “ You did not 
believe in him. You would not trust me near him. You would not have 
me look at this foreigner of yours.” 

It was true, every word and thought. La Helada could not answer. 

“ You will keep on waiting. You are old now from waiting ” 

“ He will come,” Isobel whispered huskily. 

“ If he should, if he should take you back to his people — they told me 
in the village — his people would make him ashamed of you. They do 
not believe we are white people — those Americans.” 

“ This man is not like that. He is different.” 

“ And our faces grow darker — waiting all the time — you know that.” 

“ Darker slaving in the sun. There is none in Areola who knows 
the meaning of manhood.” 

“ They are our people.” 

“ They are not my people,” said La Helada. “ I was wrong to be 
afraid of you with him. I shall not be afraid again. It was wrong to 
him and to you— and wicked of me. Everything is wrong that I Have 
thought and lived — if I must be afraid. But I am not ! I am not ! . . . 
He has been hurt. The thief with the horse was not there.” 

Marie was silent, and then she said, "It is not too late,” and she 
felt her sister’s arms. 

Their voices roused the fondista. He grumbled for them to be silent. 
God knew there was enough time in the days for talking. 

" They are not our people,” La Helada went on, in a lowered tone, 


38 Sport of Kings 

“ because the women cannot wait. Women who cannot wait do not have 
sons of strength.” 

“ The old priest — the old priest — you are like him. He was very 
strange ” 

“ He was pure,” said La Helada. 

“And your stranger is pure?” the younger sister said. 

“ Yes.” 

Marie laughed softly. “ I saw you watching until it was night — and 
he did not come. I was sorry for you.” 

“ He will come,” said La Helada. 

A sudden loneliness and terror came over Marie when she thought of 
Isobel making no further effort to restrain her. Mother and father and 
sister, Isobel had been. And now with her warm body before her in the 
darkness, Isobel seemed to have departed in her sorrow, as in death. 
. . . Yes, it was like death in the house — the pallid silence of La Helada , 
for she had learned to wait, and there was something immortal in this 
agony. 

Marie knelt before her. “ But he will come,” she said. “ I know 
he will come — to-morrow. . . . And — oh, it is not too late — I will stay 
and watch with you.” 

The older one pressed her strangely, but did not answer. 

“ He will come to-morrow,” Marie whispered. 

“ To-morrow — at noon I will go out to meet him,” La Helada said. 

It was mid-afternoon. The woman knew the American would have 
reached this place long since, had he started in the morning. On she 
hastened; the hideous hours and miles drew on. . . . She would have 
to go back alone and in the dark. Nearly half-way she had come. The 
jungle that marked the distance closed about her, and its lengthening 
shadows. . . . She would not go back now — but on to Arecibo. If her 
lover were dead; or if he were not pure — she would never go back to 
Areola. . . . She would not go on to Arecibo, but stay in the dusk of the 
thick leaves — and think — and think — until she died. It would not be 
long. Something was about to break in her breast. . . . And so it was 
that she hastened deeper into the hollow, until she heard a voice out of 
the old horrors, before life’s waiting had begun. 

“This is where — I think long ago — where the gold hid .” 

. . . She could not see them yet, but ran forward. Something did 
break in her breast, but she did not die. . . . There was silence, and 
then the hissing and laughter that she had heard a moment before, and 
years before. The brown mare was loose. Farther, upon the ground — 
the men. . . . The devil she knew so well was on top, laughing and play- 
ing and holding the knife high for the other to see. ... La Helada , 
running forward silently to the kill, perceived her lover’s pistol upon 
the ground. As of old, the other loved best the knife. . . . She Had 
always believed she would kill him, in life’s good time. 


Sport of Kings 


39 


CHAPTEK XIY. 

La Helada looked upon the wound she had made, and saw that it 
was good. Drawing the unquickened thing apart, she darted to the other. 
Bleak raised his hands at the wrists. She lifted his head in her arms. 
Blood came forth from his throat. . . . The woman bared his breast. 
Neither bullet nor knife- thrust, she found, but the imprint of the iron 
shoe. It had gouged a little from right to left, yet the force had been 
almost enough. She could not see if the bones were broken. The skin 
of his face, around the eyes especially, was harrowed and bleeding. She 
knew well the blunt, knobbed fingers that had played there. Bleak was 
still inert in her arms, but his low-lidded eyes followed her — with a 
humility and adoration that gave strength to her and passion to her 
prayer for his life. . . . 

The dusk thickened rapidly. She heard nestlings in the leaves. 

. . . The brown mare, invisible in the thicket, now lifted her clear 
whinny. From afar a horse answered. It was not the buckskin saddle- 
pony. He was outlined nearest of all against the darkening green. He 
suddenly raised his own trumpet. The two were trembling. 

La Helada, kneeling beside her lover, realized that she was not 
alone — that eyes of strangers held her through the dusk — saw her now 
with her own and the body of the other she had known. A voice was 
whispering in the direction of the brown mare. It was just a whisper, 
yet she knew some one was trying to attract the brown mare — coming 
forward as if with a handful of grain to catch a free horse. . . . 

And now the woman saw the leather-bag that contained the paper 
and pesos. She stretched out her hand to it — tossed it softly under 
cover of the deeper growths. . . . There was a laugh and the brown 
mare was led away. 

This theft roused her. Her lover had come so far. Now the voices 
brought deeper and more fearful intelligence. The one who had come 
nearest was telling the others what he had seen. The voices were of the 
men of her own people — old companions of him with whom she had 
reckoned. They had come to deliver him from the American. No one 
knew so well as she, La Helada, how evil they were. . . . Would the 
brown mare be enough? . . . She heard it plainly now, and with a 
scornful laugh — “La Helada de Areola ” 

They were worse than wolves to her — their numbers more dreadful 
than the group-ferocity of a wolf-pack. . . . They had come to deliver 
an old friend from the sheriff — and had found him delivered. . . . She 
heard them laughing now at the death, and at herself — the wonder of the 
sheriff down, the other dead, and the woman being there. 

She must not seem to know them; she must not lift her head as if 
to identify them; she must not seem afraid. ... 

“Yes, it is La Helada ,” she answered, not turning her eyes from 


40 Sport of Kings 

the face of her lover. “ If you know La Helada, you will know that 
she has kept her word.” 

The story had travelled much farther than Arecibo. She could not 
endure the tension in silence. 

“Why do you not 1#ke your friend away — if you want him? You 
have the mare that he stole — let him ride once more.” She laughed. 

“We did not come for him dead,” one answered, with repression. 

“ Ah — then you are the wardens come to take La Helada for keeping 
her promise ” 

They laughed at her now. “ The Frost waited until the harvest was 
rich before she nipped,” a voice called. 

“ You are welcome to the harvest. . . . Watch, I shall toss it 
toward you ! ” 

She sped to the covert where the bulging leather bag had fallen, 
raised it in her arm, and hurled it toward the voices. . . . “ Mine was 
the red harvest, and that was enough. And now I am tired of you and 
sick of talk — and it is wise for me to be alone.” 

She heard the scramble to the place the bag had fallen; heard them 
draw away, heard the touch and flare of matches from the box. . . . 
Suffocating in the terror, she lifted her lover again to her breast. . . . 
She had no more to throw to the wolves. . . . Would they come now? 
Would they come now? ... It was like a stroke to her — the sudden 
trumpeting of the forgotten saddle-pony. . . . They were leading the 
brown mare away. The buckskin, taught to stand with trailing bridle- 
rein, would soon break his law of life to follow. 

La Helada crawled to him and caught the rein. He signalled again. 
The mare’s answer was farther. . . .Yet the Mexicans might return. 
The woman’s every breath was a prayer. The saddle-pony’s head whipped 
at the rein, which dropped to the hollow of her arm. 

“ Oh, loved American, you must help me now ! . . .You must help 
me lift you to the saddle. . . . They are devils. If they think of coming 
back — there will be an end of you and me together.” 

Bleak muttered thickly, but it was she who lifted his entire weight, 
until he stood, his knees giving, body rocking, his brain lost in tumults 
of agony. . . . She prayed for strength; kissed him to awaken his 
strength. In hideous blackness of the very pits of pain, Bleak tried 
to hold the thought that he must help, but it was La Helada who lifted 
him to the saddle. The inspiration of fear, and the passion to save, 
made her terrible in strength. When his feet fumbled and lost the 
stirrups, she held him all the tighter. . . . Always the answering whinny 
of the brown mare was farther and farther away — until they were out 
of the hollows between the hill ranges. Now if the mare answered her 
old serving-companion, the sound did not reach. 

. . .You could have seen them under the stars — the man hunched 
forward, tied to the pommel, held from the wear and grind of the pommel 


41 


Sport of Kings 

against his body, by a bundle of springy branches the woman had 
gathered and thrust between. Often he mouthed a word for mercy — to 
be let down from his cross. But La Helada knew that he would travel 
better to-night in the warmth and fresh ravage of his hurt, than to- 
morrow in the excruciating stiffness of healing’s first intention — if 
to-morrow meant healing ! . . . The woman prayed for that. . . . 

She wanted nothing but that. The brown mare — a devil to be rid of ; 
the money-bag — bait of wolves. She wanted nothing but his life. She 
could go to the church, to pray for that — to the altar where the old 
women came, the whipped and lost-hearted women. She could kneel 
with them now. She had not been good in holding herself apart from 
them. She had seen the evil and weakness of others, and had been 
estranged from their good — estranged, too, from the mercies of the 
Mother of us all. . . . And she caught the cold hand of her lover, and 
cried out to the stars for his life. . . . Through the years she had con- 
ceived her heaven, and he had come. “ Though I have been hard and 
aloof, do not let him pass from me now, 0 Mother of infinite mercy ! 99 

Thus La Helada prayed through the hours, holding fast to the 
stranger, holding fast to the buckskin pony, that halted often and 
trumpeted to the wide night. ... At last the shadows of the huts of 
Areola — the density of the trees against the gray faint diffusion of 
starlight, the broad sprawling fonda — the empty stable with its open 
door. . . . She unbound her lover, and let him sink through her arms to 
the straw. Long had he ceased to suffer in the numbness of too much 
pain, which brings at last its own anaesthesia. ... He sighed and 
breathed. She kissed him — kissed him again. 

Then she unsaddled and bridled the pony — brought grain and fresh 
water. She did not fasten him in any way. Had he not earned the 
freedom to search for his mistress, after he was fed? . . . She was 
leaving now for help to carry her lover to the house, but a thought came— 
from her soul it seemed to come. ... It meant she must leave him 
for a moment — and run for prayer to the little church where she had 
not knelt in all the years. The action seemed related in her soul to 
the life of her lover. ... It was tearing to leave him, but he breathed 
and was at rest. . . . Running, she crossed the deep sand of the village- 
road. The door was always open and a candle burning. . . . Mary was 
there in her old supernal mercifulness — looking down upon the candle- 
glow; and at her feet a woman was kneeling. ... La Helada marvelled. 
Even in the heart of the night, a woman had come. She hurried for- 
ward and knelt beside the creature. It was little Marie, who turned to 
her, crying: 

“ It is a miracle ! My prayer is answered. ... I was praying for 
you — and for him ” 

“ He is come,” murmured La Helada , sinking to rest an instant upon 
her sister’s knees. 


42 


Sport of Kings 


XY. 

The woman came to the hammock and lifted her patient,, already 
toasted on one side from the sun of midday. Bleak let himself gradually 
to the stones of the porch, while the hammock was swunk end-to-end 
where the sun would hunt it out an hour later. The hours passed 
very rapidly — very swift reading, they were, but these punctuations were 
laborious. Bleak meanwhile stood stranded where he had come to foot, 
for the wide white clothes of the fondista were close-reefed. He looked 
as if he had been wading and the tide had suddenly flowed out. . . . 
Now La Helada came to the rescue, restoring him to the folds of the 
swaying couch, and Bleak sighed. 

When the woman was within about her work, Bleak would count 
the blossoms of the vine, until he fell asleep. It was handier than 
counting sheep. Besides, the yellow heat did filmy dances of a most 
drowsying nature through the interstices. One’s eyelids dropped from 
the very ache of the light. It was all right. They had all told him to 
rest; to avoid every appearance of exertion. The old women, who had 
learned all the ills of flesh by having them — and the old Spanish doctor, 
by a life of association — had agreed for once that Bleak must lie very 
still, until his heart healed. Besides, La Ilelada had said it. And Bleak 
was a true patient. The days had worn out his pain ; all that was black 
and clogged in his breast was running free and red again. At first 
he was not permitted even to think about work; but now a little each 
day, in the presence of the woman, brief essays into the future were 
indulged. The particular trouble that raised Bleak’s temperature in 
these increasing intervals could not be restrained much longer. 

He felt that he must go ahead to Sodom to prepare a place for her. 
It was n’t the impossibility of using his own shack — that would do for 
the present, with a lot of brown soap and river-water — but Bleak could n’t 
take the woman into the Sodom that he had left. Sodom must be born 
again, even as he had been. The claim was there. Bleak could hold 
the thought of working on the claim almost as long as he could fight 
sleep with the dancing sun-rays in his eyes — but Sodom must be made 
familiar with this new zeal. In short, he had the particular man- 
passion to be respected in the presence of the woman — even if he had to 
fight for this respect individually with every man on the wet placer. 
. . . From the present eminence, Bleak could see that he had not been 
exactly respected. In the usual course, the old point of view would 
reassume itself unerringly in men’s minds — this was the crux. La 
Ilelada could have his failure in Arecibo, but she must not look upon that 
old picture of Bleak Totten as butt of the community. 

Far better never to return to Sodom, Bleak thought, — but the claim 
was there, and the debts were there. It wrung him to go back broke. 
... He deserved to. He had broken from decent honesty. He had been 


43 


Sport of Kings 

greedy for the winning. It had all come out like number-work, the 
answer proved. He had gotten no more than was coming — but it wrung 
him to go back broke. Yet the very essence of the big game he had lost 
and its meaning to a man, was to go back, face it out, work it out. 

Bleak saw that he had needed to get off into the desert alone. It had 
been the very life of him; he had never seen himself before. But that 
other fool-Bleak must not be restored by the men of Sodom for the 
eyes of the woman. 

He watched her now at her sewing — and he thought of the bullet 
and the diabolical Larry; of her lifting him into the saddle, lifting 
the boulder of a man that now strained the hammock. She had lifted 
him before and since in other ways. ... So cool and strange she was — 
and how wonderfully her red lips went out — to catch the thread for 
her teeth to cut. Her down-cast eyes he watched with fervor religious. 
... If she ever really turned away (as he had thought in those two days 
of hell in Arecibo), Bleak saw that he would be smashed to pulp. It 
was his own dirty doings and her suffering because he did not come, that 
let down his spirits to desperation before the race. It was all very clear 
to him. . . . “ Cool, sweet little thing — brave and good little thing ! " 
he thought. . . . The big fellow trembled with love for her. What a 
rock she was in a weary land ! 

“ But you cannot go alone / 5 she said, biting the thread again. “ I 
would find you fallen on the way and near to death. Oh, no, — oh, no! 

. . . No, I will not stay in the town nearest Sodom — until you make 
the house ready. I will go with you and help to make it ready. . . . 
Do not talk about that any more. . . . Besides, a stranger is coming . 55 

Bleak was too troubled to care about the stranger. He would fall 

like Samson upon the Sodomites if . . . The fondista's running 

forth and the voice that answered caused Bleak to turn his head a little ; 
and presently he beheld Killjoy, nee Kenney. 

The old horseman was lean from his long journeying and ashen from 
forebodings. He had known something would happen, even when the 
telegram came announcing the capture. He had learned the truth in 
Arecibo, and was not slow to accept Bleak's testimony (which was partly 
the woman's) that it was the younger male set of Arecibo which had 
undertaken to rescue Larry and the brown mare on the road to Areola. 
. . . Her kicking accomplishment was discussed. 

“ That young sarpint l’arned her that," said Killjoy. “ He was 
partial to that brown mare as a babby. I recall me as how she had a 
splint — how he brought her to me all rockin' lame one day; an 5 says 
he loved her like a sister, an' how he 5 d like to hev her fur his own an' 
work out the price of her. I told him if he work till kingdom come, 
he wouldn't earn more'n a leg or two o' what she was worth to me. 
Bless you, I knew that filly when she war milkin' her mammy fur a livin'. 
But Larry seed her right. He banged that splint onto her, I concluded 
later." 


44 


Sport of Kings 

Bleak was very thoughtful. The manger in the hillside, the candle- 
light, and the boy’s tale that first night in Arecibo, came back and broke 
itself into pieces against this. He, Bleak Totten, had certainly been 
mentally accessible. 

“ She ain’t just natchurl, thet mare,” Killjoy brooded. “ I ’d lay 
me down an’ let her walk on me to get her back.” 

Bleak shivered, and the woman looked up from her sewing. 

“ But thar ain’t no such luck as me ever seein’ her ag’in,” the 
old man added. 

“Well, we got the hoss-thief,” Bleak consoled. 

The jaw of Killjoy seemed to slip its hinge, and his tongue to search 
for something lost. 

“ But you sure recall, Mister Sherilf, it was the hoss an’ not the 
man — thet reward was offered on.” 

“ Lord love you, Killjoy ! — I did n’t say nothin’ with intents to 
hold you up nohow ! ” 

The old man breathed. “ I reckon you ’ll go on searchin’ ? ” he 
ventured finally. 

La Helada glanced at him mildly. She did n’t understand English, 
but sensed a turn in the talk. A deep chuckle came from the hammock. 

“ In course I ’d delegate to give you expenses ” 

“ Killjoy/’ said Bleak, “ did you ever hear the story o’ Roger’s 
di’mond ? ” 

The other hadn’t, and was hopeless in prospect. 

“ It was told to me at a time of sore distractions an’ long ago,” said 
Bleak, “but I recollect this Roger was one of them Ethiopian princes, 
and he had a di’mond that flashed hell-fire. One night a slave stole it, 
cuttin’ Roger’s throat. Slave was found next day acutely dismembered, 
said di’mond bein’ traced to a camel-driver, whose stuffin’ was kicked 
out pronto by the faithfulest camel in his fold; hereupon the narrative 
gets down to business and pushes on — perishin’ in excitement. . . . 
Now, I landed on that brown mare o’ yours in quiet times, an’ what she 
did to me in that brief spell — I ’m still thinkin’ on. I was n’t quite the 
same — even after seein’ her first in Nineveh. . . . No, I ain’t goin’ to 
take up the trail o’ Killjoy’s di’mond ” 

Thereupon Bleak translated the story with emendations for La 
Helada, who delighted in the playful and pellucid depths of her lover’s 
wisdom. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

As they neared the American border, and the honeymoon was in 
full, La Helada became more shy and exquisite than ever. All the 
enticements of girlhood returned — as they never could have come to her 
in Areola. They had crossed the desert together — as true mates should 


45 


Sport of Kings 

do in the beginning ; found their hills and rivers and springs and towns. 
. . . Bleak could not understand that this was the same trail he had 
come alone, cursing and bewildered and alone. It was so different now — 
as if Mexico was sunk Lethe-ward, leaving all its silence and beauty and 
heaven for two happy ones who had remained alive. 

That ? s the way a man comes to the house of a woman — cursing and 
bewildered and unfound. 

Morning and night he was amazed at the burden she carried — and 
the ease of it — all the little things of love, the laughs, the. whispers, the 
shining adventures, queer celestial intimations, as if children were 
awaking to laugher in her heart. All that he knew of the world of men 
and the sky of angels were but beginnings of her wisdom. When he 
faltered, she finished. . . . 

For days (in the hammock toward the end) he had dreaded the 
journey for her. The fatigue, the thirst, the terrible heat, the little 
towns that greet a stranger in silence. What a ghastly illusion of an 
unfound man was that ! She was swift as an antelope, light as a winged 
creature. Fatigue — she had abundant strength remaining for the 
evenings, to serve him and make the people love her. There was n’t 
a church on the journey that she did n ? t find for prayer; as for the heat 
and thirst — it was like a journey through a garden. Indeed, she had 
come into her own garden — planted and tended by years of waiting and 
dreaming. Love was the living light of it. The first dawn had melted 
the frost. 

Bleak only lived what she believed him to be. All thoughts came 
to the bar of what she would have him be. Such was her marvellous 
handiwork in his making-over. ... He believed in his heart that he 
had been desperate and evil and abandoned. With his every word and 
action he sought to withhold the woman from that. She made it very 
easy as do those genii of the feminine whose love is fresh-hued and 
replenished each day. His Spanish prospered and was capable of emotion. 

Only, Sodom must not restore the old Bleak Totten for her eyes — 
this was the solitary shadow that followed the man. 

Maldonado at last — the little town that hung like a balcony from the 
last hill, overlooking the bordering Cabezo, and then i Sodom. . . . 
Bleak was thinking how long it would take to pay the debts and raise 
the money to send for Marie. Little sister would not go out in the 
honeymoon, but declared she would abide with her father until the 
message and the money arrived. Thought of her was very dear to the 
heart of Isobel, who planned to journey around by Arecibo, Santa Tomas, 
and the railroads, Mexican and American. . . . This night, however, 
Bleak was thinking mostly of the debts, the eke and the labor — and of 
what Sodom would say on the arrival to-morrow, and of how much of 
this the elder sister would understand. The shadow was closer than 
ever before — as Sodom was closer. . . . 


46 


Sport of Kings 

Never was the woman more radiant. She saw long journeys in the 
future. America — the States — was before her, strange calling visions 
of the years; and in the aura of her lover she divined all powers to 
master this tremendous and terrifying civilization. She granted the 
penniless gold-digger of to-morrow, but to-night he was potential with 
the future of a king. She saw them journeying together to all the cities 
and cathedrals of the world; and she saw Marie arriving swiftly and 
established safely in some real man’s, heart. . . . Love and the border 
stimulated her like a fiery wine. The more that Bleak tried to cool and 
obscure her dream, the more radiant their origin. 

“ But Sodom is less than Arecibo,” he said. 

“It is the beginning — and we shall be together.” 

“ But the shack is a kennel. We are worse than poor — in debt ! ” 

“We shall work together — and your house shall be mine. I shall 
love it ” 

“ The fellers ” — Bleak hesitated, unwilling to do a general injustice — 
“well, they’re only my sort o’ ruffians.” 

La Helada laughed. “ They will be glad to see you again,” she said. 

“ Won’t you stay here to-morrow an’ let me sneak across alone — 
an’ get things squared away for you — please ? I ’ll come back for you 
to-morrow night — please ” 

“ Please not,” she said, softly joyous. “ I want to get there and 
begin. I shall love it all.” 

He turned to her hopelessly, but the gleam of her eyes in the star- 
light caught and held him for a moment to the exclusion of all else. He 
heard her strong, true heart — beating so rapidly, and for him. A look 
came to his face, now that the last hope was gone, — a look, as he 
glanced across the border, that was a warning for Sodom to “ Pass 
pronto and tread delicate ” across his emotional preserves. He turned 
to the woman again. . . . They stood on the slope of the mesa, and it 
was morning. 

“ She smokes ! ” said Bleak, regarding the settlement with awe. 

“ Did she not smoke before ? ” the woman asked. 

“Not like that!” he said with excitement. “They’ve sure struck 
action in the last ten weeks.” 

Bleak felt lonely and an outlander. Something had boomed in 
Sodom. He had not been there — he, sheriff, had taken no part. As of 
old, he was returning luckless and empty-handed, and with a woman — 
no horse, no money, no thief — and with a woman. ... He looked at 
her now sorrowfully. This to which he was bringing her was little 
better than the herds and hearths that she hated so terribly. And she 
would not stay back; she would not understand; she was so blithe 
and pretty. . . . 

A male human figure had detached itself from the settlement and 


47 


Sport of Kings 

approached them. It was a thick, squatty figure which Bleak knew for 
Fortitude Lerch long before the features cleared. Here was hell’s own 
debt-master, the man who knew the value of a dollar, as a mother alone 
with her first man-child. Bleak felt him cold and metallic. . . . Thus 
he prepared the woman : 

“ This here Lerch person ain’t no particular friend o’ mine.” 

And Fortitude at this moment appeared to grasp the identity of his 
old townsman: the result was extraordinary. Bleak did not remember 
ever having seen the other without his hat. There had been a Sodom 
suspicion to the effect that Fortitude was hairless — but it never had been 
proved even by night alarms. It shone now to the delighted sun. 
Fortitude was smiling, fumbling with the broken fixture — and smiling 
as if his parents were restored from beyond the grave. 

“ It ’s all off, Fortie,” Bleak said vaguely. “ We got that greaser- 
kid — but an outfit of his pals threw us down in a jungle an’ took the 
mare away. . . . So I ain’t ready to pay ” 

Bleak was set and rigid for the change. The shock was cruel accord- 
ingly, since the hat was not restored, nor did a tittle of the smile’s 
effusiveness diminish. 

Now Fortitude was at speech. He had been a hard man, he said; 
he had perceived the error of his ways. Change had come to his heart, 
the same which he was prepared to prove by taking over Bleak’s debts, 
and paying him the sum of fifteen hundred dollars, the trifling con- 
sideration being the un worked claim which Bleak in his official capacity 
had not time nor desire to make the most of. . . . Fortitude accentuated 
all this by drawing forth from the small of his back a black leather case, 
the removal of which left his belt dangling. 

Out of the shock and the chaos, one deadly fear manifested itself 
in Bleak’s mind: Fortitude, now counting, would surely die before 
the transfer could be made. A paper had to be written. . . . The face 
of the woman came between Bleak’s tortured eyes and the pressed 
unfolded currency. 

“ What are you doing ? ” she asked. 

It would have been far easier to hurl his hat into the air than to 
summon Spanish for these negotiations. La Helada asked again. Bleak 
got through it. 

“You will not sell,” she said quietly. “He is not a particular 
friend of yours.” 

In vain Bleak pleaded the change of heart in the Lerch person. 

La Helada pointed to the settlement. “It did not smoke like that 
before,” she said. 

Bleak began to feel the heat of their unsheltered position. 

Now baleful, now whining, Fortitude followed them to the Canyon, 
where a row of new shacks had been built, with reinforcements of tent- 


48 


Sport of Kings 

cloth. . . . Strangers moved to and fro, among the old faces; greetings 
were roared at Bleak, and hard hands grasped his, but no one had time 
to listen about the horse-thief. . . . “Are you thinkin’ o’ sellin’ the 
claim, Bleak ? ” . . . “ Say, Sheriff, is that old claim o’ your’n on the 
market this mornin’ ? ” There was ample time for this. ... A dude 
from the East offered him eight thousand before he reached his old 
shack to ensconce the woman. . . . 

He wanted to be alone with her there ... to tell her again and 
again how great and essential she was ; but townsmen followed to the door. 

That door had never worked. Late winds had blown the dust and 
gravel against it; rain had lodged it wide-open. ... He left her with 
a look of longing, and a promise to run back. 

At Nig Fantod’s he found that the violent little man, Bertie Cotton, 
had uncovered a new lode just three weeks before; that his wash had 
suddenly turned rich. The lode drove straight into Bleak’s claim and 
through — because Fortitude had burrowed night and day until he 
found it on the north. Bleak’s was the heart of El Dorado. Already 
the East had heard it calling, and claims were being staked clear on to 
Nineveh. . . . Bleak could bear no more. He had not been gone from 
the shack twenty minutes — but the way back was long. 

La Helada was weeping. 

“ What is it — hai, little woman, what ’s troublin’ ? ” he called, 
running. 

“ Mio dote — mio dote!” 

She was softly beating her knees with a package of Mexican paper 
money. ... It was her dower, she moaned. For years she had been 
saving. She had intended to surprise him. Four hundred dollars in 
Mexican — enough to pay many of his debts. . . . “ And now,” she cried, 
“ you are so rich — it means nothing to you — nothing ! ” 

Bleak removed his hat, and bent to kiss her shoulder. Suddenly he 
went to the door and with serious energy set about kicking away the 
gravel. 




















NOV 4 1913 


t 




